I’m really quite fascinated by the psycho-dynamics of lurve, so I pay a lot of attention to how my own mind deals with it.
I’m willing to bet that most people have this in common with me: I have a kind of ideal about my attitude toward lurve—how I like to think I use it—but in practice, things are a whole lot messier and laced with emotional influences that I don’t acknowledge in my “official” , sanitized lurve policy. That shouldn’t be all that surprising really, given the masses of research that show how we consider ourselves to be much more rational in our processes than we really are.
For starters, I’ll bet that lurve actually means quite a bit more to most people than they’re willing to acknowledge. Further, I think we talk about how little it means to us precisely because it means more to us than we think it should.
And I think our feelings about users influence us more than we’re willing to acknowledge, too. Look, there’s just bound to be a strong “priming” effect in force when we ‘re reading through Qs & As. Seeing who posted a comment (and for those of you who think you don’t look to see who posted it before reading it, I assure you that it registers on a subconscious level anyway) will inevitably evoke an emotional response based on your past interactions with that user, and will just as inevitably color your perception of the quality of that comment. You will be favorably or unfavorably disposed toward the comment before you even read it. So while it may be true, in a sense, that we give a GA/GQ based on our perceptions of merit, do still unconsciously raise and lower the bar for each hurdler.
I say all this based on careful observation of my own behavior, but I’m daring to generalize these observations to most users simply because this so perfectly fits with a vast body of psychological research.