Among the innumerable benefits
of the Internet, I love the ubiquitous ratings systems. I really appreciate customer
comments and ratings on products and services. Before I buy anything, or hire
someone to do a job, I can find out what other people’s experiences were. Often
I will look at the one-star reviews first—what was it that really bugged
people?
No longer can companies dazzle
us with advertising that hides a shoddy product—once the bad reviews start piling
up no ad can make up for the bad reputation. Whole businesses revolve around
reputation. For example, Angie’s list helps you find the best service
professionals in your area.
Reputations also help me
evaluate a book or blog post. When I’m reading about a subject in which I have
no expertise, looking the author up online can give me some insight into
whether I should trust his or her research and arguments.
As a young woman, I was taught
to be careful of my reputation (that is, don’t be too easy with the boys) but
other than that I never gave the concept much thought. But two of the books I’ve
read this year mentioned the importance of reputation in human life.
The first book was on human evolution: Wired for Culture, by Mark Pagel. As the title suggests this book argues
that the defining aspect of humanity is our complex social organizations, built
on cooperation within groups. Reputation, Mr. Pagel says, is vital to making
our societies work: cooperation requires trust, and we use reputations to tell
us whether we can trust a person.
"Our social systems of cooperation and helping are revealed as sophisticated marketplaces, capable of generating both individual returns and goods that benefit others. They work like a monetary system, with our personal reputations acting as the currency we use to buy trust and cooperation. Reputations are valuable, so we have to earn or pay for them. Once purchased, a good reputation can then be used to buy cooperation from others, even people we have never met, just as we can use money to buy goods from people we have never met…Indeed, our reputations represent the first ‘monetary union’ or single currency. We could even see them as a form of credit, because a good reputation might allow you to negotiate an exchange on the promise you will produce your part of the bargain later (in this context it is noteworthy that ‘credit’ derives from the Latin credo or ‘I believe’)…So fundamental are our reputations to our social systems that comparing them to a monetary system is not merely apt, it should probably be made the other way around."
