Reputation, Then and Now
Reputation plays an important role in any society. Reputations can take many forms, from a benevolent benefactor to a malevolent tyrant, but in all cases reputations are earned and given. Additionally, a person may have multiple reputations that can seem to be in conflict. For example, to a 12 year old, a 15 year old may be a bully, but to that bully’s peers he may be a cool tough kid that gets his way. In the long run the bully reputation may be the one that follows the bully, but that’s not always the case.
Evolutionary History?
Source: krossbow on flickr.com
Why do reputations matter though? How have we come to use reputations as a test to determine if we trust someone? Interestingly, these answers may have evolutionary roots. By now most of us have a general understanding of memes. Recently, Urban Times ran a piece on the use of memes to deal with the difficulties of the police break up of the Occupy movement camps in the US. These are useful ways of dealing with situations and being part of a community. However, memes are a serious topic in cultural evolution scientific discourse. A meme, in a broader sense, is a cultural version of a gene and successful ones are passed down and are kept, while unsuccessful ones are rejected.
In that sense, researchers such as J.W. Stoelhorst and Peter Richerson, have taken the perspective that initially cooperation was one such meme. They do not actually use meme in their study as that term itself is highly contested in the literature, however their basic premise is that cooperation evolved at the same time as other human capabilities were evolving. This approach has given rise to an interesting perspective on how organizations were created.
One of the key points is that evolutionary speaking it may have been beneficial for early humans to cooperate with each other. It would have been expected that a tit for tat type arrangement would have been formed, where giving food in the time of need would have created an expectation of a reciprocity later when food was needed. Over time reputations would have formed for members that violated this type of behaviors.
This especially became critical as populations started to expand and group members did not exclusively have to deal with a small contained family unit where retribution was being exiled and likely death. In larger groups reputations would form related to the behavior in trading situations and times where cooperation was required. Freeloading or free riding could become a problem in any size social group, reputations in the social groups can identify free riders and require a change in behavior from other members to eliminate the problem.
I'm curious as to what the new currency for reputation will become; now that it's mainstream to be social online. Numbers (of followers, likes, upvotes, etc.) still have the instant credibility attached to them but, in a world with 'celebrities' who are famous for nothing except being well known, not for having any social value, this is clearly a flawed approach. I very much hope a framework similar to the core structure of Quora's comes to fruition, in order to provide some solid ground to stand on. Having a mixture of social proof from traditional sources as well as the audience one is able to create is the next step in providing reputable real time data on...well...reputation.
I was going to read this article but then I saw the "Next Page" button and couldn't be bothered. Moral of the story? Single page articles get read more that split ones.
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