Does Pointing Out Popular Posts Make Them More Popular?

Some time ago, I added the Popular Posts plugin to my blog. Since then, I’ve noticed that I’m getting a lot of comments on many of the posts listed as “Popular Posts.” The list remains fairly consistent—at least eight of the ten posts listed are on the list consistently.

Does seeing a post identified as being popular make it more attractive to readers? Am I drawing attention to these few posts and consequently distracting attention from other older posts that I might think are even better? Should I be doing something different to get people to read more posts in the archive?

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