There are a number of interesting directions for further research. First, the robustness of our results across independent populations suggests that the phenomenon may be relevant to other settings in which the evaluation of expressed opinions is a key social dynamic. Moreover, as we have seen in Section 6, variations in the effect (such as the magnitude of deviations above or below the mean) can be used to form hypotheses about differences in the collective behaviors of the underlying populations. Finally, it would also be very interesting to consider social feedback mechanisms that might be capable of modifying the effects we observe here, and to consider the possible outcomes of such a design problem for systems enabling the expression and dissemination of opinions.