The importance of reputation in the modern world, and in particular in the western world has been diluted. By that, I mean that while the importance is still there, it is harder to gauge a person’s reputation due to the anonymity of big cities, more freedoms, and the loss of the community culture.

Throughout human history, reputation has been one of the most important, if not the most important aspect that people wanted to develop and protect. The problem with reputation is that it is hard to earn, and extremely easy to lose. Losing one’s reputation could mean being expelled from community, losing your job/position, title or even death.

It’s almost paradoxical that in a modern world that is more connected than ever, it’s actually somewhat easier to get away with things that would have absolutely shattered someone’s reputation in the past. This of course has both benefits and negatives, both individually and as society as a whole.

The intricates of reputation are vast and could probably fill in books and books of information, but in this article I’ll specifically focus on how many of us have loosened our grip on our own reputation and the damaging effects that can have without us realising.

The Human Brain and Associations

The brain, with all its marvels, has a tough job to sort infinite bits of information being presented to us all the time and make sense of what’s important and what is not.

To do that successfully without feeling overwhelmed, it creates associations, spots patterns, and ranks different pieces of information based on relevancy and emotional impact. All of these things happen mostly subconsciously.

Due to the importance of reputation as a social species, we all have an inept ability to place a person somewhere in the current group’s social hierarchy very quickly. Some are better at this naturally, others have developed their skill through experience and while the initial “judgement” is subconscious, it can also be conscious evaluation.

The markers for how these judgements are made depend on the situation, the group, and individual preferences but within seconds, we have placed a heavy anchor on a rough estimate of their reputation.

This initial estimate might be totally wrong – if a person initially shows patterns normally associated with low reputation behaviour, but actually has a lot of qualities of good reputation that were initially not shown or seen. This is where the Horn Effect makes it difficult to get out of a bad initial judgement. Once you mark someone negatively, it takes increasingly more effort to reverse that initial judgement.

Horn and Halo Effects

An easy example of the above is posture. If someone new walks into a room that already has a group of people, and they are slouching with their hands behind their back and looking down – you bet that you will subconsciously automatically place that person as unconfident and then likely to not have high reputation in the group.

However, later you learn that actually they had a horrible day and were temporarily upset, and most of the time they are confident and vibrant. Depending on how many initial factors influenced your first judgement, is how long it will take for you “update” the actual reputation of someone. For example, if they come next time and everyone is trying to win that person’s attention now that they are back to normal self, it probably won’t take long. But posture is an obvious example, humans subconsciously judge a vast array of stimuli to make an overall judgement and sometimes we don’t realise how certain small things may be impacting other’s judgement of ours.

The opposite of the Horn effect is also possible with the halo effect. If someone enters the room with a powerful walk, good posture, and meaningful direction, then you may initially assume they have high reputation in the group. However, later you find out that the posture is just compensation for an insecure person. Due to the initial positive judgement though, you will spend at least some time giving them the benefit of the doubt, until experience shows their true reputation.

But why should I care about reputation – I don’t like people who judge anyway

“I don’t judge people” is a lie. Everyone judges everyone and you can’t stop it. It’s subconscious. You can judge that someone is so insignificant to your life that you don’t care what their reputation is, but you will still make that judgement.

What you can control, and what most people mean when they say “I don’t judge people” is to give people more time to confirm or update a judgement before acting on the initial judgement.

However, even then, because of the horn and halo effects, it really helps if people showcase their best self when initially meeting people, and of course making sure to maintain it in the long-run.

The summary is, whether you like it or not, reputation will influence every aspect of your life. You can either accept it and take steps to improve it so that you can get the things you want easier, or you can reject it and take the harder path.

How does long-term reputation develop?

If we ignore the initial reputation judgement which is somewhat superficial – posture, fashion, external beauty, number of friends, etc, eventually people tend to converge to your more or less actual reputation within a social group. This social group can be in context of a small friendship group, or in a bigger community group, or even as a person in the whole world and everything in between.

To develop your reputation, you need to have more people with high reputation themselves to respect you. Note: You don’t need to have everyone respect you, that would be impossible, it’s not a numbers game either. A few high-quality people respecting you can raise your reputation overall even if thousands do not like you.

So how do you get people to respect you? By providing them with high value. Different people will be able to benefit from different high values from you. Friends would want a high value friend who is good at listening and being there for them. Business partners would want someone who can be trusted and knows what they are doing. Comedians would respect other comedians who manage to create new style of jokes rather than simply repeat stories with a new flavour. Most qualities overlap though – good communication, integrity and highly skilled at at least a few things required by society.

The dangers of not managing reputation – Negative aspects define your reputation ceiling

In reality, most people are not too bad at either developing their reputation, or at least knowing what they need to do to develop it.

Where people fail, is the little (and not so little) things that keep them stuck to a certain threshold. An extreme example to illustrate the point:

You have an amazing friend. They are able to listen carefully, give fair but honest advice, help you when you need it. They are developing their business and using your services so that you both benefit. You both introduce each other’s network and all-round it is a win-win. However, that friend doesn’t shower as often as they should, and every weekend gets absolutely wasted on alcohol, drugs and passes out in some random location.

This is an extreme case, but what it shows is that the ceiling of your reputation is put by the negative aspects of yourself. And no matter how much other “good stuff” you do, you will almost never break out of that ceiling.

What does that mean? It is almost always more important to focus on removing things that reduce your reputation, then doing stuff that can increase it.

How do you find out which stuff are ruining my reputation

This is the tough question. How do you ensure you do not become a boring, cautious carrot and still limit actions that put a cap on your reputation?

Here are a couple of examples that may help you identify your weak areas:

• Oversharing with people. Being vulnerable at the right amounts at the right time with the right people is good. Emotion dropping or sharing too much or trusting someone too early is not. Even if the person you overshare to ends up being a good, honest person, they may have subconsciously placed you into a higher risk category. Why? Because if you overshared too early with them, you may overshare too early with someone who is not as honest.

• Saying bad things about people, even if it is justified. Whenever you have to criticise, focus on criticising their actions or words rather than the person themselves. It makes you a kinder person, but also gives people the opportunity to change. For example – look at the difference between these 2 sentences:

“John is an absolute idiot, don’t listen to him.”

“What John said is stupid, I would recommend doing … instead”

• Both sentences above convey the same message, but one focuses on John’s words. You may think this is subtle, but it makes a lot of difference over time. Maybe John did say something very stupid, maybe he isn’t even the brightest person, but what if he said it with kind intentions? There is no need to attach John’s character when the only thing that needs attacking is what he said that particular time.

• Focusing on your own wins rather than creating win-win situations, or taking value from others without giving any back. If someone is “above you” in reputation, say they have already accomplished a lot of what you are trying to do, the way you give value is by asking interesting questions that others haven’t asked. So do not ask basic questions like “Why did you start your business”. Go deeper than that. “What was the toughest point of starting your business and how did you deal with it?” If you know any specifics, go even more specific than that.

• If the person is “lower reputation” than you, and they ask you questions about yourself. Answer their questions, but then also ask them what they are struggling with or want to achieve. Do not offer advice that wasn’t asked for, but be inviting for them to ask for it.

• Not setting boundaries with people. If you let people walk over you, people will see it, feel it and they will not respect you either, lowering your reputation. The way you set boundaries depends on who it is and on the situation, but the general guidance is this – Only offer 1 chance of redemption (or 0 for big fuck-ups), make it very clear what the boundaries are up-front and remove anyone from your life that doesn’t respect your boundaries.

• Avoid showing intimate details in public where people that know you can see them. When you are young, making out with lots of people in a club is fun and exciting. After a certain point, making out with anyone other than your partner in-front of many people that know you is harming your reputation, regardless of your gender. There is nothing wrong with having fun, but leave it to people’s imagination. Take the person outside somewhere with some privacy, go to someone’s house, it doesn’t matter.

• Do not state controversial opinions which you are not passionate about, unless you have done your research and are willing to risk losing people’s respect. Most of the controversial opinions we hold are worthless. They are not backed by research but by emotion or personal circumstances. Unless it is something you are passionate about, there is no good reason to let others know them. Even if they don’t get offended, they may share what you said to someone who is passionate about it and make them lose respect for you.

• Own up to mistakes but do not be overly apologetic. Own up, face the consequences of your actions, state your errors and how you plan to improve and then move on. There is no need to dwell. If people want you to dwell, it’s time to say goodbye even if you were the cause of the problem. Learn from your mistake though and don’t make it again.

• Trying to do everything, including things you are not good at. Stick to a few things that you are good at or be open about being in the learning phase of something new. But do not try and be an expert at everything. Let others show you’re their strengths and be able to delegate tasks to them. When they do something better than you could of, praise their work. If you are not an expert at anything – focus on 1 thing at a time until you are.

• Superficial stuff – make sure you have decent posture – doesn’t have to be perfect if it’s not your thing but at least decent. Same with fashion, hygiene. These are superficial but basic things that make it a lot easier to give a decent first impression.