A new study from the UBC Sauder School of Business suggests the way ratings are displayed — using either star icons or numbers — can significantly alter how consumers perceive quality.

In general, people overestimated visual ratings — aka ones with star icons — regardless of whether they ended in 0.25, 0.5 or 0.75. Across the board, ...

The star rating system is a scale ranging from 0 to 5 with increments of 0.25. A five star match is as close to perfect as it gets while a zero star match is a complete dud.