August 20, 2026 • 43 mins
We're talking about reputation. On a fundamental level, our reputations are a signal of our qualities that make us worth associating with, and we tend to spend a large amount of time ruminating and even obsessing over what others think of us. In this episode, we explore why we need reputations as social creatures, understand why we can misinterpret others’ reputations, and think about what we can do to repair a bad reputation.
We unpack:
• Where our reputations come from
• Why two people can view the same person so differently
• The halo effect and how appearance biases our perception of others
• How our reputations can change over time
• Why we shouldn’t always believe what others say
• How we can repair a bad reputation
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Our favourite sources:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8487743/ https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/ecology-of-minds/202509/what-makes-a-good-reputation https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349443219_The_halo_effect
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties.
Today we are talking about the psychology of reputation and
why it just matters so much to us as humans,
(00:47):
particularly the role of reputation in our twenties, and what
it feels like when we know that people maybe don't
like us, maybe have the wrong idea of us, maybe
don't know us, or don't think of us the way
that we think of ourselves. What do we do with
that information? So I got this message from a listener
(01:08):
the other day who requested this episode, and I'm going
to read it for you because of course I had
a permission, and I think it's a great description of
basically the conundrum more the issue that we are talking
about today. Hi, Gemma, I have an episode topic for
you that's been really heavy on my mind when I
was nineteen. I did some things I'm not proud of.
(01:29):
I hurt friends, I wasn't a good person, and I
still feel bad about it. My dad had just died,
and I could give you so many more excuses for
why I behaved the way I did, but I just did.
I'm twenty four now, and I can't stop obsessing over
not just the people I've hurt, but my bad reputation
because of it. I recently met a new friend who
(01:52):
I realized after a few months was friends with some
of my old friends. She said to me, once you know,
you are much nice so than I thought you would be.
Not like what people say, and I just desperately wanted
to ask her, what do people say? What are they saying?
It might be, but I guess I knew it would
all be bad. How do you deal with having a
bad reputation? And how do you prove to people that
(02:14):
you have changed. It's been five years now, I want
to tell them that I'm not that person anymore? Or
is it pointless? Any advice would be helpful, And if
you have read any research on this, I would love
to hear it. Thank you to this listener for sharing
that that is a difficult position to be in. You're
kind of balancing a lot of desires and fears and
(02:35):
also a deeper kind of moral sense of what is
right for me to do in this situation. But you
would be surprised how many messages I've gotten on a
very similar note, how so many other people have a
similar dilemma, which is essentially, I've made these mistakes when
I didn't know it better, when I was an unhealed
(02:55):
version of myself, when I was younger. Now that I'm
not that person, and what do I do about it?
I think in my own life, even recently, I've been
coming to terms with this idea of like, somebody's last
impression of me, last memory of me is somebody that
I no longer am, and their last impression of me
(03:17):
was when I was at my worst. How do you
square that with the growth that you have done, with
the change that has happened in all of our lives.
Let's talk about it today, because we know on a
fundamental level that our reputations are important. They served and
continue to serve an evolutionary purpose. They provide valuable social
information to others, whether it's correct or not. But what
(03:38):
about all the ways that reputations get complicated, like when
they are inaccurate, or when they do represent somebody that
we no longer are, or when people lie about us.
It's a big juicy episode. I will say, without further ado,
let's get into the psychology of reputation. So a reputation
(04:02):
is basically the opinion, belief or estimation that people hold
about a person, but also about a group of people
an organization, and it's based on past behavior. It's based
on character, performance, stereotypes, some of our behaviors that have happened,
some of which are assumed, some of which is subjective.
Our reputation, as I briefly mentioned before, operates as kind
(04:26):
of a mental shortcut for those around us. It's actually
not that valuable to us unless it's a good reputation.
But it's a simplified version of who we are that
has social capital and allows others to determine do I
want to be around this person? Do I want to
let them into the group. Do I want to give
them a job? Do I want to be their friend?
(04:47):
Do I want to date them? Or not? And it
is tangible in the way that it directly influences our lives.
It is intangible in the way that our reputation is
not controlled by some central database, and it can exist
differently for different people. Even if there are some stable
themes or stable ideas of who we are that are
(05:08):
generally wide held, people can still differ in how they
see us. Now, our reputation has levels to it. Some
parts of our reputation is influenced by things we've actually done.
That is level one. It is action driven. Some of
it is influenced by secondary assessments i e. Things we
haven't done, but also how someone has interpreted our actions
(05:29):
based on their own values, based on their own perspectives,
how stories about us have changed as they've been repeated,
And I guess also situations where people haven't had the
full information, but they've either made up additional information or
made assumptions or deducted something about us based on stereotypes
(05:51):
that are not true. That is level two. That is
the subjective social evaluation level of reputation. Research that has
been done into reputations because it's a massive field of
social psychology, shows that there are a few universal features
across all societies that define reputation, particularly with regards to
(06:14):
how cooperative people are perceived. Whilst there are widespread similarities
across societies, reputations are also culturally constructed. They are shaped
by local norms and values. Even though they would emerge
from what we'd refer to as universal psychology, some factors
(06:35):
of it aren't. Some factors of reputation seem to be universal,
others definitely differ. In twenty twenty one, researchers look through
a huge ethnographic record of more than one hundred diverse
societies to find what they call the twenty distinct reputational domains,
and they found that what they found was that these
included things like aggressiveness, cooperation, cultural conformity, honesty, sexual fidelity,
(07:00):
the social status, and supernatural ability. These things seem to
influence reputation no matter where you were. The researchers discovered
that in over eighty percent of the societies they examined,
a good reputation typically had a few critical things. It
involved being cooperative, pro social, honest, norm abiding, and industrious.
(07:21):
A bad reputation also followed a similar theme. It usually
contained traits like dishonesty, aggressiveness, harm towards others, and actions
that disrupted social harmony. So there seems to be this
universal sense of what makes a good community member, and
this is carried by our reputation. There is a critical
(07:45):
behavior though, that really seems to stand at more than
any of the others when it comes to a bad reputation.
This is dishonesty, and not just dishonesty, but dishonesty and hypocrisy.
People strangely are more okay with somebody's behavior if they're
at least honest about it, if they're at least kind
of upfront that like, hey, I'm going to be an arshole,
(08:07):
I'm going to behave in ways that you might not like,
but at least I'm going to be honest with you.
We seem to be less okay if you're an asshole
and you pretended that you won't, if you didn't give
it any kind of hint that that was going to
be the case. It's why celebrities who are like have
these identities and these reputations is being kind of dicks, Like,
we're kind of less mad at them compared to celebrities
(08:30):
who claim to be really nice but then as secretly arsholes.
Hence the kind of pushback against Ellen DeGeneres, for example,
it's because what they are doing in psychology is called
false signaling. This one twenty seventeen paper published in the
journal Psychological Sciences found that people generally assess hypocrites, which
is who these people are, more negatively than someone who
(08:53):
has done or who has genuine negative moral opinions but
doesn't lie about it. So and hypocrisy seems to be
the universal reputational sin, the way that cooperativeness seems to
be the universal positive reputational asset. The other thing that
seems to her to really deeply impact how your reputation
(09:16):
is formed is not just your actions and whether you're
dishonest or hypocrite or cooperative, And it's not your intentions,
it's how you make others feel. It's a very famous
quote from Maya Angelou. People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will never
forget how you made them feel. And that holds up
(09:36):
very accurately under science. Essentially, it's impossible for us to
remember every single thing we have ever said to another person,
or indeed what they've said about us. We cannot keep
an ongoing catalog of every person's actions because our memory
and our working memory is limited, But what we can
(09:58):
remember is the distinct emotional response that somebody invoked in
us at a specific time. Our mind encodes memories and
moments of emotional pain, of deceit, of betrayal, of sadness,
almost in a different way to the average experiences we have,
making it so those moments are consolidated faster, deeper, and
(10:20):
with more detail. It doesn't matter your intention, It doesn't
matter what you say after the factor. If you apologize,
the emotional aftertaste of a bad experience with somebody lingers
because of how memory is constructed, especially if you made
them feel really bad about themselves. I think somewhere this
(10:41):
comes across very strongly is our experiences as children, and
the fact that people who were cruel to us, mean
to us, belittled us. Those memories last a very long time.
They're very hard to shake. Of course, we still do
it in adulthood, even when we know that our subjective
interpretation may not be accurate, even when we know people
(11:04):
are capable of change or we're just having a bad day.
But its children memories and bad memories seem to really
really stick. You know, every day we have lots of
fleeting interactions with people that leave a bit of a
stamp on us, with a person on the train or
the person who made your coffee or your new coworker.
And first impressions, particularly in regards to our emotional state,
(11:27):
do matter. We know from research people can form an
opinion within literally five seconds, not because you've given them
a wealth of information to rely on, but because we
instinctively trust gut feelings, especially our own, and once we
have a gut feeling, it's very hard to replace. It
is a bit of a human flaw, though it might
(11:48):
be protective, It is evolutionary. It is sometimes not always conscious.
In fact, it's rarely conscious. But the floor of first
impressions is that it doesn't like people surprise us, and
people can surprise us. First impressions are rarely accurate. They
are extremely layered, and they are often extremely personal, and
(12:10):
people are very much capable of change. But we can't
always reason with this deeper emotional feeling, and you know,
sometimes we don't want to, and sometimes we shouldn't have to.
You know, I might also add that I say first
impressions aren't always accurate. Sometimes, though people do the wrong thing,
they really mean they're cruel, They don't want to fix
their mistakes, and that feeling, no matter what they do,
(12:30):
does linger. And it might be for a good reason.
But we also have to be aware of some of
the other biases that show up in reputational psychology that
mean our first impressions aren't always correct. Stereotypes and prejudice
play a massive role. You can be completely delightful and
kind and respectful and industrious and harmonious, but if someone
(12:55):
just doesn't like people who look like you or sound
like you, you are never going to win. And that
is a good warning to us all that our reliance
on reputation is flawed. Our reliance on reputation, whether we
like to admit it or not, is often about fifty
percent about us and fifty percent about somebody else. And
(13:16):
sometimes it's more than that. Sometimes it's more about our
past beliefs, our past experiences, and past hurts, and it's
not entirely accurate about how this person actually is. Also,
on the flip side, and this deserves mentioning, we tend
to think people are nicer or have better reputations based
on things that have absolutely nothing to do with their character,
(13:41):
such as their appearance. This is another aspect of this
that we don't always see spoken about. I want to
talk about this by specifically in a bit more detail.
We're going to take a short break first, and then
we'll get into it. How we first appear to people,
(14:02):
particularly in terms of our attractiveness, actually has a profound
impact upon traits that others associate with us, so our reputation.
There is a name for this, it's called the halo effect,
and it is absolutely everywhere. In one of psychology's earliest
studies on reputation, done in the nineteen twenties, the psychologist
(14:26):
Edward Thorndyke asked military officers to rate their soldiers on
traits like intelligence, leadership, and character. But there was a
twist to this. Many of the officers barely knew the
men they were judging. They had no clue who half
these people were. They sometimes didn't even know their names.
What Thorndyke discovered was that if a soldier looked physically impressive,
(14:51):
officers automatically assumed he was smarter, he was more competent,
he was more trustworthy. One good attractive qual cast a
kind of psychological glow over everything else, and that's why
he called it the halo effect, and more than a
century later, it's still shapes who gets hired, who gets promoted,
(15:12):
who gets trusted, even like who we choose to follow,
who was seen as a villain versus a victim in
certain situations. Now, this effect has been seen and repeated
in many studies in the decades since. In twenty twenty three,
a large study of almost three thousand participants found that
the same individuals received significantly higher ratings of intelligence, trustworthiness, sociability,
(15:38):
and happiness after having applied a beauty filter on a
picture of themselves. Interestingly, this was also quite gendered. The
study also found that beautified men received significantly higher scores
to their perceived intelligence compared to women, yet another example
(15:59):
of repute being shaped by things that have very little
to do with our character, and yet people unconsciously assume
they do. We have to be super aware of this,
you know, especially with social media, especially with the way
that we can change our appearance so instantaneously. At times,
(16:24):
we still adopt so many shortcuts that aren't accurate, one
of them being if somebody looks a certain way, parts
of who they are must suddenly be a lot better,
and we can see how this links to things like fatphobia,
links to God, so many other kind of social issues
that we have in society because of again prejudices, stereotypes,
(16:48):
shortcuts that our mind makes. This is the critical thing
about reputation. We think of it as being this generalizable
thing where we can label somebody with three or four words,
and everybody who knows them would agree on those words.
Maybe even one word everybody would agree on they are
a liar, they're greedy, they're kind, they're quiet. But the
(17:12):
reputation you have with each person or each group will
likely be a little bit different, will have its own flavor,
you know, will have people could think about you entirely different.
It seems that it's not stable, even if we kind
of believe that it is. And this explains why someone
can be adored by one group hated by another, and
(17:33):
why two people can form very different opinions of somebody
and spread a very different reputation of someone based on
the exact same interactions. For example, someone who is very
loud might be loved by one person as a person
who was up for a good time, who was social,
(17:54):
who has a good sense of humor. It was charismatic
and warm. This might be impart because you know, they
associate loud people with positive feelings because of their history
of being in a big family and being around very
loud people when they were growing up, so they don't
see them as a threat. And then an entirely different
(18:15):
person can walk in, see the exact same things, not
like loud people, and be like their reputation who they
are is overbearing, overwhelming, a disturber of the peace. Maybe
they associate that loud person with somebody they knew who
bullied them, or somebody they knew who had really negative
traits alongside being loud, so it makes them naturally distrustful
(18:39):
of loud people. When it comes to the way others
view us like it's not always accurate. And I know
I mentioned social media before, but I do think it's
also added a whole new dynamic where we can sit
and assess somebody's behavior without them having any say in it.
We can form an opinion based on seconds of content
(19:01):
or footage, slice down from an hour long conversation, or
slice down from an entire life. The social media climate
today has arguably made reputation management much more complex and
something that non celebrities have to think about like we
didn't have to think about it that broadly the way
that we do now. You know, in any stage, somebody
(19:23):
can film you doing something, somebody can come and visit
your page, somebody can edit what you've said or a
video or a photo of you, and whether it's fair
or unfair, it's going to change how people think about you.
You know, content that people capture of us amid our
day to day lives can suddenly go viral and judgments
can be made often without many facts, particularly when highly
(19:48):
emotive situations are recorded or highly viral or like triggering
situations are recorded. Additionally, if we think of our reputation
as what other people say about us when we're not
in the room, because of social media, there are now
nearly infinite number of rooms in existence that our name
(20:08):
could be spoken about it if the algorithm just happens
to push out a photos of us, or somebody screenshots something.
If you have a public Instagram or a public LinkedIn
or a public TikTok, there is often this thought in
the back of your mind, like what did people think
about me based on what they see here? And is
it an accurate assessment of who I? Think I am,
and I think that makes reputation feel like a much bigger,
(20:29):
more important idea these days, because in any stage, at
any time, there could be somebody stalking your profile and
coming up with an assessment. You know, do I like
this person? Is this the kind of person I would date?
Is this the kind of person i'd be friends with?
What does this very limited information tell me about whether
(20:49):
I should invite this person to my party, whether I
should give this person a job? This goes on. You know,
That's why I look at people with social media with
so much jealousy, because there is so much freedom in
only being known and observed by those you would like
to be around, of being kind of unreachable and untouchable
(21:11):
in a sense. I want to return to something I
mentioned earlier before I rushed past it way too quickly,
which is the idea that one bad moment, one bad decision,
is capable of ruining your entire reputation. We could give
the example of a viral video. It's a perfect example
(21:31):
of that. Where you know, you see videos of somebody
arguing or kicking a puppy or licking a doughnut, if
you get that reference, or somebody just doing something and
it's like their reputation is done for I feel like
the Coldplay cheating scandal was a great example of like
how fast that can happen. A lot of people will
claim it's unfair that one moment means more than a
(21:55):
thousand other moments where somebody was good somebody wasn't doing
something bad, Like why doesn't that count? They may say,
why is this one big moment so important? Well, the
reason those big one off actions loom so large in
the reputational ecosystem in comparison to the millions of good
things or neutral things you've done, is because of one
(22:16):
special ingredient, and that is trust. It's also because of
the significance of what we call character revealing moments, and
it links back to that point about hypocrisy and dishonesty.
People want you to be upfront about who you are
first and foremost, even if who you are as an asshole.
(22:37):
These sliding door moments throw all of that into question,
and that's why they feel so significant. That trust is
hard to get back. You cheat on somebody, you do
something terrible to a friend, it's hard to get that
back because your capacity for doing such things has been revealed,
and it's assumed it was always in you and you
were lying about it. As human beings were also hardwired
(22:57):
to pay attention to those big moments. It's more because
of something known as the negativity bias. This was coined
in two thousand and one by the psychologist Paul Rosen
and Edward Roysman. Rosin and Ruysman, I know, like perfect
names to be collaborators, but you know, like so much
of our behavior, negativity bias like is about survival, and
(23:22):
what it basically says is that if we pay attention
to the worst stuff and we think of that as
more important, we will be safer. You know, hundreds of
years ago, having heightened attention to bad, dangerous negative threats
or bad dangerous negative people in day to day life
was very important, could be a matter of life and death.
So those who noticed danger or bad reputations and paid
(23:44):
more attention to that, they were more likely to survive.
Neuroscience research has shown that there is greater neural processing
in the brain in response to negative stimuli. In studies
conducted by even more psychologists, there's always more participants were
shown pictures of either positive, negative, or neutral images. The
(24:07):
researchers then I think they like observe electrical activity in
the brain, and what they found was that negative images
produced a much stronger response, particularly in the front or lowe,
but in the executive functioning and thinking parts of the brain.
Because negative information causes such a surge in activity in
(24:28):
such a critical information processing area, our behaviors and attitudes
tends to be shaped more powerfully by, as I said,
the bad stuff, the bad news, the bad experiences, the
bad one off than all the other good times that
may outnumber it thousandfolds. So someone who makes a big mistake,
(24:48):
whether they were having a bad day or not, whether
they regret it now or not, whether that's who they
are fundamentally or not, that big mistake is going to
be remembered because of our brains hardwiring. So is this forever?
Does our reputation ever change back? Or is it permanent?
(25:11):
This is really where we are getting into our listener question,
isn't it? What do I do about past mistakes? How
do I convince people I'm not that anymore? There's a
famous quote from Warren Buffett Like the Billionaire, in which
he says it takes twenty years to build a reputation,
it takes five minutes to ruin it. If you think
(25:31):
about that, you'll do things differently. I think that's the
full quote. This is the critical part about reputation. It
can change instantly, often in a negative direction. The positive
direction is a long game and requires very few mistakes.
The reason reputation, once injured is hard to reclaim not impossible,
though it's not impossible. I promise we'll get to that
(25:54):
in a second. But why it's hard to reclaim is
because of two additional bias. Bias is everywhere in this episode.
It is the confirmation bias and the recency bias, and
this is why we sometimes feel stuck with the reputation
we had at nineteen or eighteen. Firstly, confirmation bias is
the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that
(26:15):
confirms what we already think. If we form an opinion
that someone is judgmental, even neutral things they say, we
will interpret as matching our preconceived notion of them. They
could say, hey, where'd you get that shirt? Neutral question,
but we could hear it based on our own bias
as where should I avoid shopping so I don't get
(26:38):
that shirt? That shirt looks cheap that shirt, it doesn't
go with you, and you're coloring confirmation bias cemmense reputations
by making people favorite evidence supporting their views whilst ignoring
contradictory data. Meaning again, first impressions or establish beliefs about
(26:59):
a person are so difficult to change, whether it is
fair or not. A twenty twenty two study on how
human's sample evidence to support prior beliefs concluded that this
is likely because we don't like to be wrong. It
takes too much cognitive effort to rewrite our whole opinion
of someone, especially somebody we don't see or know that well.
(27:22):
It takes a lot less effort to just confirm what
we already think and say that's who they are. The
second bias is recency bias. This is when we overemphasize
recent events, recent information, recent historical data more than perhaps
data that is more accurate. This is what I was
(27:44):
talking about before I cringe. I literally lay awake at
night thinking that somebody's last impression of me was formed
when I was eighteen and stupid and the worst version
of myself and not reflective of the person I am now.
I'm older, I'm wiser. I've been to therapy for many,
many hours, and you want to go back, and you
(28:06):
want to say to them like trust me, like I'm
not that person anymore. I'm better than this, I promise you.
But you can't. You can't actually doing that would be harmful.
You just have to be okay with someone's last impression
of you being the worst version of you you ever were,
and trying not to think about it too much, and
just knowing that's just how they see things. You can't
(28:28):
always find it. It's human psychology. The most recent information
we have access to to us is the best information,
according to our brain, is the best information, regardless of
whether there is newer, better information out there that we
just haven't sought out or we just don't have access to.
There are, of course, many consequences of this, and consequences
(28:51):
of having a bad reputation, and I also think we
need to talk about how some of those are deserved.
If someone does harm people and hurts, if that is
a consistent pattern, we want others to notice steer clear.
That is a social good In many ways having about it.
Reputation and the consequences of that also makes people realize
(29:13):
their errors a bad reputation is a form of social
correction that requires people to do better and have accountability.
That's another way that people see it. I think the
hardest part is the instances where a bad reputation is undeserved,
right because spend a lot of time talking about why
a bad reputation is deserved. But anybody who's experienced character
(29:35):
assassination from a friend, a colleague, a family member, nx.
Knows that when someone wants to ruin your life and
ruin your reputation, there are many effective ways they can
do that. And the pain that causes, alongside the unspoken
paranoia that isn't mentioned very often, is intense. You're always
(29:56):
worried like, oh my god, who have they spoken to?
Like what false narratives have they spread? Like you meet
people and you're like have you heard? Have they gotten
to you first? Like have they gotten to you before
my actions have had the chance to And this can
lead to a lot of isolation and also a lot
of self doubt like maybe I am who they say
I am? Like how can I trust myself? And that
(30:18):
quickly spirals into a lot of self gas slighting. Character
assassination is often discussed in psychology, mainly in regards to
political psychology and media psychology, and how false message is
spread through these avenues and spread through media in the
news and whatnot. But it happens on an everyday basis
all the time. So when we return, let's discuss this
(30:43):
critical point, why we can't trust everything we hear about people,
the psychology of second chances, and when, if ever we
should address our negative reputation stay with us. So, following
on from what we spoke about before the break, should
(31:05):
we always believe somebody else's reputation, especially if we don't
know them? Is that a wise social decision? I think
it's worth thinking about who your source is and how
they position the narrative around this individual who you know
or maybe don't know that well. Firstly, people's opinions of others,
(31:27):
again are filtered through their own lens of characteristics and
experiences and the kind of things they prefer or they
don't like in other people. Reputation is a powerful tool,
but it can be distorted by gossip, by jealousy, by malice.
So is your source someone who would benefit from you
thinking a certain way about this other person? That can
(31:49):
be worth considering. Additionally, how does this person speak about
people generally, positively, negatively. I think we all have that
one person in our lives at least. I think we
all have this one person in our lives who is
just pessimistic about everyone. You could be the most angelic
(32:11):
kind individual, they will have something bad to say about you. Now,
does that mean that everybody they possibly meet could be
so evil? Probably not. So you need to really closely
consider their words and know what kind of person they
are before you judge what kind of person they're describing.
I think whilst a reputation can offer a general guide,
it's also often wise to rely on your own personal
(32:34):
experiences of a person, and if necessary, verify through evidence
rather than the other way around, or rather through the
room and mill. Now, this is difficult because we don't
want to fall into the position of like, we don't
want to be the person who's like, well, they were
always nice to me. I don't be that person, especially
if it's a close friend saying like this person hurt
me and they are not apologetic and I can't be
(32:56):
around them listen to them. Use your judgment wise, like,
don't disregard that. But if what you are hearing is
from a distance source, an untrustworthy source, and they can't
give examples, and they seem to be almost gleeful in
their retelling, and they really seem to benefit from this.
Just take a step back and trust your gut and
(33:19):
use your better judgment. The other thing, to consider the
evidence somebody is giving for this person's awful character. How
recent is it and when did these actions occur? Think
about when you hear this, whether you'd like to be
judged by information from that long ago in your own life.
(33:39):
For example, I had somebody tell me the other day
that I shouldn't work with this specific person who they'd
known at fifteen because she had a bad reputation for
being unstable. Firstly, I hate the word on the stable,
and I was like kind of cringed when they said it.
But secondly, I was kind of like, would you want
to be judged by who you were at fifteen? Would
(34:02):
you even recognize who you were at fifteen? Would you
even know what they were thinking about? Probably not. Now,
this obviously stems from a larger debate that humanity has
been having for centuries, which is can people truly change?
And we're not going to answer that completely in this
forty five minute episode. But I think you guys know
(34:23):
me by now, and I think you guys know my
relentless optimism about the human condition, And honestly, I believe
they can. And I believe that if the mistake somebody
made was ten years ago and it wasn't that big
of a deal, they probably have learned from it. The
best accurate indicator for someone's real character is consistent behavior
(34:44):
over time and their personal commitment to growth, rather than
just one specific way of behaving a very long time
ago or at a very specific moment, especially if that
is not a significant moral indicator or value indicator. That mind,
What do we do when you feel like you are
the person I am describing, you are the person with
(35:05):
a bad reputation. Perhaps you recognize that past behavior, your
past behavior, has really hurt people, and you want to
do better. Perhaps with wisdom, you know you've realized, Hey,
I was in the wrong that whole time, like I
made bad calls. Do we go about begging people forgiveness
or do we take a different approach? The biggest thing
(35:27):
you should know is that asking someone to think about
you differently is nothing compared to showing people that you
are different and doing so independently and genuinely. That is
the best thing you can do. Mike Mooney he is
the author of a book called The Reputation Shift. He
(35:50):
says that if you want to change your reputation, it
quote all starts with values, because the authentic link between
what someone stands for and what actions they will take
is the most reliable. We need to commit to what
we believe in and we need to live at minute
(36:10):
by minute as best as we can decide. You know
who am I going to be? Who do I not
want to be? And stick with it and when you
do drop the ball from time to time. Because we're human,
we're fallible. Just remember that most things are fixable if
we own up to it. Own your actions, own your words,
acknowledge what you did wrong, and make a promise to
(36:34):
yourself before you make a promise to others to commit
to being better, and to commit to being better, because
you don't want to be the guy or the gal
or the person who influences other people's experiences in a
negative way. In addition, when we try and mend our reputations,
it can be very easy to think that it just
involves an apology apologies are very easy. Proving yourself even
(37:02):
when nobody asked is much much more valuable. It can
be hard to confront like that, hey, maybe I was
in the wrong, but your reputation will never improve by
trying to fix your reputation. If there is genuinely something
that you are responsible for that you cannot own up to,
it doesn't mean that those things need to be your destiny.
(37:23):
I think that's why we don't like to acknowledge them.
But our brains are amazingly neuroplastic, Like acknowledging something is
what means that you can change that thing. We learn
to change through being open with ourselves about what it
is that we actually don't like or want to improve
and committing to that. I think that's also one of
the benefits of a bad reputation, when you get to
(37:45):
the point of being like, oh my god, I messed up.
Maybe I am that person no one expects better of you,
so you kind of have the piece you need to
actually do the work. But also you get a wake
up call that some people never get or will never
listen to, that maybe I'm not the person I think
I am. Maybe I'm not that great, but at least
I have the opportunity to be better. Some people never
(38:06):
get that choice, and they just assholes for their whole lives. Additionally,
I think there also comes a point where ruminating, obsessing,
and over correcting for your reputation, imagined or real will
just do more damage than good, specifically to you. Nobody
improves from a place of shame. They only improve from
a place of acceptance. Your shame and your guilt, and
(38:28):
you hiding away isn't helping you, and it isn't helping
the people that you have heard. Like to just continually
think badly of yourself and think that's going to make
you a better person, you would be wrong fundamentally as well, Like,
you know who you are and you know that this
was a mistake, You know your intentions. We know our
own guilt, We know that we feel bad, We know
(38:51):
what we want to improve on, whether others think we're
capable of it or not, whether others have made up
full stories about us or not. Our reputations are inevitably
not always up to us, and I think that's why
you sometimes need to take a step back from it
and be like, what do I think about me? And
(39:12):
what do the people closest to me, think about me
when we tend to worry about our reputations, because we
think that everybody is thinking about us all the time,
and we think that our reputations are reflective of our
true identities, and that's why we chronically ruminate. And it
just isn't a good use of our time worrying about
what other people think when you have made a commitment
(39:34):
to being better, or when you know who you are,
actually stops you from being able to be that person.
Do you know what I mean? Like, the obsession with
reputation is what probably leads to a worse reputation because
you get lost from what is critical and deep and
intrinsic about you. If you are feeling suffocated by others opinions,
(39:55):
I think it's important to write down who you would
be if they all disappeared, and who you would want
to be if they were nowhere to be found and
their influence on your life is non existence. Focus on
the people who love you, who know that your character
is pure. Focus on pouring energy into them. Focus on
the people who know that you can change, or who
love you the way that you are. When we have
(40:16):
clarity over who we are, including perhaps the things we
want to improve on. We can ignore our temporary mistakes
and setbacks in the knowledge that we are a work
in progress. We are somebody who is trying their best,
and that actually counts for a lot more than a
(40:37):
good reputation that is based in falsities. So that, my friends,
is a psychology of reputation. I do hope that it
had enough nuance in it. I did want to consider
all perspectives, and I hope to the listener who wrote
in that we adequately answered your question. I think to summarize,
reputation matters people who only rely on reputation, though falling
(41:01):
for a lot of cognitive biases and fallacies. If somebody
has a bad reputation, you know, yes, if it's consistent
behavior and it's accurate, very much worth listening to. There
are people who you be you better believe deserve a
bad reputation, if not a worse reputation. But it's also
important to be critical of where we're hearing that information from,
(41:23):
who benefits from that information, whether it is accurate, and
holistically believe that people can change, and that if we
were to believe that everybody is the mistakes they made
at seventeen and eighteen, especially minor mistakes like none of
us are worth saving, none of us deserve a good reputation.
(41:45):
So if you are kind of ruminating on like, oh
my god, people still think that I am this person
and I've done these bad things, and am I Am
I allowed to even be happy? Am I allowed to
even try to be better? Absolutely? You do. And whether
that is a gateway to a better reputation or not,
it doesn't matter, because you will feel more aligned with
who you are and you will feel more like your
(42:07):
real self. So that is the end of the episode.
Thank you for listening. Thank you to our researcher Lucy
Davidson for her assistance with this episode. I really hope
that you guys enjoyed it. I really hope that you
appreciate it. Did not make a tailor swift reputation reference
or joke Throughout this whole episode, I was trying to
find a way to bring it in, and you know what,
(42:28):
it just never happened. We were being being too serious.
But yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it's
helped you somebody who also struggles with this. Sometimes I
think we should talk about it more and white reputation
is like this really weird thing that we think about
actually very very often and never talk about. So yeah,
(42:48):
if you relate to this episode, leave a comment down below,
and make sure that you check out an episode on
Netflix if you feel called to do so. We've just
like redone the set and it looks really really cool
and I'm very excited about it. But yeah, there'll be
links in the description. I hope you go check it out.
Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself,
don't worry all too much about your reputation, especially if
you are trying to be better. That is the takeaway,
(43:10):
and we will talk very very soon
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back
(00:26):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is
so great to have you here, back for another episode
as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties.
Today we are talking about the psychology of reputation and
why it just matters so much to us as humans,
(00:47):
particularly the role of reputation in our twenties, and what
it feels like when we know that people maybe don't
like us, maybe have the wrong idea of us, maybe
don't know us, or don't think of us the way
that we think of ourselves. What do we do with
that information? So I got this message from a listener
(01:08):
the other day who requested this episode, and I'm going
to read it for you because of course I had
a permission, and I think it's a great description of
basically the conundrum more the issue that we are talking
about today. Hi, Gemma, I have an episode topic for
you that's been really heavy on my mind when I
was nineteen. I did some things I'm not proud of.
(01:29):
I hurt friends, I wasn't a good person, and I
still feel bad about it. My dad had just died,
and I could give you so many more excuses for
why I behaved the way I did, but I just did.
I'm twenty four now, and I can't stop obsessing over
not just the people I've hurt, but my bad reputation
because of it. I recently met a new friend who
(01:52):
I realized after a few months was friends with some
of my old friends. She said to me, once you know,
you are much nice so than I thought you would be.
Not like what people say, and I just desperately wanted
to ask her, what do people say? What are they saying?
It might be, but I guess I knew it would
all be bad. How do you deal with having a
bad reputation? And how do you prove to people that
(02:14):
you have changed. It's been five years now, I want
to tell them that I'm not that person anymore? Or
is it pointless? Any advice would be helpful, And if
you have read any research on this, I would love
to hear it. Thank you to this listener for sharing
that that is a difficult position to be in. You're
kind of balancing a lot of desires and fears and
(02:35):
also a deeper kind of moral sense of what is
right for me to do in this situation. But you
would be surprised how many messages I've gotten on a
very similar note, how so many other people have a
similar dilemma, which is essentially, I've made these mistakes when
I didn't know it better, when I was an unhealed
(02:55):
version of myself, when I was younger. Now that I'm
not that person, and what do I do about it?
I think in my own life, even recently, I've been
coming to terms with this idea of like, somebody's last
impression of me, last memory of me is somebody that
I no longer am, and their last impression of me
(03:17):
was when I was at my worst. How do you
square that with the growth that you have done, with
the change that has happened in all of our lives.
Let's talk about it today, because we know on a
fundamental level that our reputations are important. They served and
continue to serve an evolutionary purpose. They provide valuable social
information to others, whether it's correct or not. But what
(03:38):
about all the ways that reputations get complicated, like when
they are inaccurate, or when they do represent somebody that
we no longer are, or when people lie about us.
It's a big juicy episode. I will say, without further ado,
let's get into the psychology of reputation. So a reputation
(04:02):
is basically the opinion, belief or estimation that people hold
about a person, but also about a group of people
an organization, and it's based on past behavior. It's based
on character, performance, stereotypes, some of our behaviors that have happened,
some of which are assumed, some of which is subjective.
Our reputation, as I briefly mentioned before, operates as kind
(04:26):
of a mental shortcut for those around us. It's actually
not that valuable to us unless it's a good reputation.
But it's a simplified version of who we are that
has social capital and allows others to determine do I
want to be around this person? Do I want to
let them into the group. Do I want to give
them a job? Do I want to be their friend?
(04:47):
Do I want to date them? Or not? And it
is tangible in the way that it directly influences our lives.
It is intangible in the way that our reputation is
not controlled by some central database, and it can exist
differently for different people. Even if there are some stable
themes or stable ideas of who we are that are
(05:08):
generally wide held, people can still differ in how they
see us. Now, our reputation has levels to it. Some
parts of our reputation is influenced by things we've actually done.
That is level one. It is action driven. Some of
it is influenced by secondary assessments i e. Things we
haven't done, but also how someone has interpreted our actions
(05:29):
based on their own values, based on their own perspectives,
how stories about us have changed as they've been repeated,
And I guess also situations where people haven't had the
full information, but they've either made up additional information or
made assumptions or deducted something about us based on stereotypes
(05:51):
that are not true. That is level two. That is
the subjective social evaluation level of reputation. Research that has
been done into reputations because it's a massive field of
social psychology, shows that there are a few universal features
across all societies that define reputation, particularly with regards to
(06:14):
how cooperative people are perceived. Whilst there are widespread similarities
across societies, reputations are also culturally constructed. They are shaped
by local norms and values. Even though they would emerge
from what we'd refer to as universal psychology, some factors
(06:35):
of it aren't. Some factors of reputation seem to be universal,
others definitely differ. In twenty twenty one, researchers look through
a huge ethnographic record of more than one hundred diverse
societies to find what they call the twenty distinct reputational domains,
and they found that what they found was that these
included things like aggressiveness, cooperation, cultural conformity, honesty, sexual fidelity,
(07:00):
the social status, and supernatural ability. These things seem to
influence reputation no matter where you were. The researchers discovered
that in over eighty percent of the societies they examined,
a good reputation typically had a few critical things. It
involved being cooperative, pro social, honest, norm abiding, and industrious.
(07:21):
A bad reputation also followed a similar theme. It usually
contained traits like dishonesty, aggressiveness, harm towards others, and actions
that disrupted social harmony. So there seems to be this
universal sense of what makes a good community member, and
this is carried by our reputation. There is a critical
(07:45):
behavior though, that really seems to stand at more than
any of the others when it comes to a bad reputation.
This is dishonesty, and not just dishonesty, but dishonesty and hypocrisy.
People strangely are more okay with somebody's behavior if they're
at least honest about it, if they're at least kind
of upfront that like, hey, I'm going to be an arshole,
(08:07):
I'm going to behave in ways that you might not like,
but at least I'm going to be honest with you.
We seem to be less okay if you're an asshole
and you pretended that you won't, if you didn't give
it any kind of hint that that was going to
be the case. It's why celebrities who are like have
these identities and these reputations is being kind of dicks, Like,
we're kind of less mad at them compared to celebrities
(08:30):
who claim to be really nice but then as secretly arsholes.
Hence the kind of pushback against Ellen DeGeneres, for example,
it's because what they are doing in psychology is called
false signaling. This one twenty seventeen paper published in the
journal Psychological Sciences found that people generally assess hypocrites, which
is who these people are, more negatively than someone who
(08:53):
has done or who has genuine negative moral opinions but
doesn't lie about it. So and hypocrisy seems to be
the universal reputational sin, the way that cooperativeness seems to
be the universal positive reputational asset. The other thing that
seems to her to really deeply impact how your reputation
(09:16):
is formed is not just your actions and whether you're
dishonest or hypocrite or cooperative, And it's not your intentions,
it's how you make others feel. It's a very famous
quote from Maya Angelou. People will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did, but people will never
forget how you made them feel. And that holds up
(09:36):
very accurately under science. Essentially, it's impossible for us to
remember every single thing we have ever said to another person,
or indeed what they've said about us. We cannot keep
an ongoing catalog of every person's actions because our memory
and our working memory is limited, But what we can
(09:58):
remember is the distinct emotional response that somebody invoked in
us at a specific time. Our mind encodes memories and
moments of emotional pain, of deceit, of betrayal, of sadness,
almost in a different way to the average experiences we have,
making it so those moments are consolidated faster, deeper, and
(10:20):
with more detail. It doesn't matter your intention, It doesn't
matter what you say after the factor. If you apologize,
the emotional aftertaste of a bad experience with somebody lingers
because of how memory is constructed, especially if you made
them feel really bad about themselves. I think somewhere this
(10:41):
comes across very strongly is our experiences as children, and
the fact that people who were cruel to us, mean
to us, belittled us. Those memories last a very long time.
They're very hard to shake. Of course, we still do
it in adulthood, even when we know that our subjective
interpretation may not be accurate, even when we know people
(11:04):
are capable of change or we're just having a bad day.
But its children memories and bad memories seem to really
really stick. You know, every day we have lots of
fleeting interactions with people that leave a bit of a
stamp on us, with a person on the train or
the person who made your coffee or your new coworker.
And first impressions, particularly in regards to our emotional state,
(11:27):
do matter. We know from research people can form an
opinion within literally five seconds, not because you've given them
a wealth of information to rely on, but because we
instinctively trust gut feelings, especially our own, and once we
have a gut feeling, it's very hard to replace. It
is a bit of a human flaw, though it might
(11:48):
be protective, It is evolutionary. It is sometimes not always conscious.
In fact, it's rarely conscious. But the floor of first
impressions is that it doesn't like people surprise us, and
people can surprise us. First impressions are rarely accurate. They
are extremely layered, and they are often extremely personal, and
(12:10):
people are very much capable of change. But we can't
always reason with this deeper emotional feeling, and you know,
sometimes we don't want to, and sometimes we shouldn't have to.
You know, I might also add that I say first
impressions aren't always accurate. Sometimes, though people do the wrong thing,
they really mean they're cruel, They don't want to fix
their mistakes, and that feeling, no matter what they do,
(12:30):
does linger. And it might be for a good reason.
But we also have to be aware of some of
the other biases that show up in reputational psychology that
mean our first impressions aren't always correct. Stereotypes and prejudice
play a massive role. You can be completely delightful and
kind and respectful and industrious and harmonious, but if someone
(12:55):
just doesn't like people who look like you or sound
like you, you are never going to win. And that
is a good warning to us all that our reliance
on reputation is flawed. Our reliance on reputation, whether we
like to admit it or not, is often about fifty
percent about us and fifty percent about somebody else. And
(13:16):
sometimes it's more than that. Sometimes it's more about our
past beliefs, our past experiences, and past hurts, and it's
not entirely accurate about how this person actually is. Also,
on the flip side, and this deserves mentioning, we tend
to think people are nicer or have better reputations based
on things that have absolutely nothing to do with their character,
(13:41):
such as their appearance. This is another aspect of this
that we don't always see spoken about. I want to
talk about this by specifically in a bit more detail.
We're going to take a short break first, and then
we'll get into it. How we first appear to people,
(14:02):
particularly in terms of our attractiveness, actually has a profound
impact upon traits that others associate with us, so our reputation.
There is a name for this, it's called the halo effect,
and it is absolutely everywhere. In one of psychology's earliest
studies on reputation, done in the nineteen twenties, the psychologist
(14:26):
Edward Thorndyke asked military officers to rate their soldiers on
traits like intelligence, leadership, and character. But there was a
twist to this. Many of the officers barely knew the
men they were judging. They had no clue who half
these people were. They sometimes didn't even know their names.
What Thorndyke discovered was that if a soldier looked physically impressive,
(14:51):
officers automatically assumed he was smarter, he was more competent,
he was more trustworthy. One good attractive qual cast a
kind of psychological glow over everything else, and that's why
he called it the halo effect, and more than a
century later, it's still shapes who gets hired, who gets promoted,
(15:12):
who gets trusted, even like who we choose to follow,
who was seen as a villain versus a victim in
certain situations. Now, this effect has been seen and repeated
in many studies in the decades since. In twenty twenty three,
a large study of almost three thousand participants found that
the same individuals received significantly higher ratings of intelligence, trustworthiness, sociability,
(15:38):
and happiness after having applied a beauty filter on a
picture of themselves. Interestingly, this was also quite gendered. The
study also found that beautified men received significantly higher scores
to their perceived intelligence compared to women, yet another example
(15:59):
of repute being shaped by things that have very little
to do with our character, and yet people unconsciously assume
they do. We have to be super aware of this,
you know, especially with social media, especially with the way
that we can change our appearance so instantaneously. At times,
(16:24):
we still adopt so many shortcuts that aren't accurate, one
of them being if somebody looks a certain way, parts
of who they are must suddenly be a lot better,
and we can see how this links to things like fatphobia,
links to God, so many other kind of social issues
that we have in society because of again prejudices, stereotypes,
(16:48):
shortcuts that our mind makes. This is the critical thing
about reputation. We think of it as being this generalizable
thing where we can label somebody with three or four words,
and everybody who knows them would agree on those words.
Maybe even one word everybody would agree on they are
a liar, they're greedy, they're kind, they're quiet. But the
(17:12):
reputation you have with each person or each group will
likely be a little bit different, will have its own flavor,
you know, will have people could think about you entirely different.
It seems that it's not stable, even if we kind
of believe that it is. And this explains why someone
can be adored by one group hated by another, and
(17:33):
why two people can form very different opinions of somebody
and spread a very different reputation of someone based on
the exact same interactions. For example, someone who is very
loud might be loved by one person as a person
who was up for a good time, who was social,
(17:54):
who has a good sense of humor. It was charismatic
and warm. This might be impart because you know, they
associate loud people with positive feelings because of their history
of being in a big family and being around very
loud people when they were growing up, so they don't
see them as a threat. And then an entirely different
(18:15):
person can walk in, see the exact same things, not
like loud people, and be like their reputation who they
are is overbearing, overwhelming, a disturber of the peace. Maybe
they associate that loud person with somebody they knew who
bullied them, or somebody they knew who had really negative
traits alongside being loud, so it makes them naturally distrustful
(18:39):
of loud people. When it comes to the way others
view us like it's not always accurate. And I know
I mentioned social media before, but I do think it's
also added a whole new dynamic where we can sit
and assess somebody's behavior without them having any say in it.
We can form an opinion based on seconds of content
(19:01):
or footage, slice down from an hour long conversation, or
slice down from an entire life. The social media climate
today has arguably made reputation management much more complex and
something that non celebrities have to think about like we
didn't have to think about it that broadly the way
that we do now. You know, in any stage, somebody
(19:23):
can film you doing something, somebody can come and visit
your page, somebody can edit what you've said or a
video or a photo of you, and whether it's fair
or unfair, it's going to change how people think about you.
You know, content that people capture of us amid our
day to day lives can suddenly go viral and judgments
can be made often without many facts, particularly when highly
(19:48):
emotive situations are recorded or highly viral or like triggering
situations are recorded. Additionally, if we think of our reputation
as what other people say about us when we're not
in the room, because of social media, there are now
nearly infinite number of rooms in existence that our name
(20:08):
could be spoken about it if the algorithm just happens
to push out a photos of us, or somebody screenshots something.
If you have a public Instagram or a public LinkedIn
or a public TikTok, there is often this thought in
the back of your mind, like what did people think
about me based on what they see here? And is
it an accurate assessment of who I? Think I am,
and I think that makes reputation feel like a much bigger,
(20:29):
more important idea these days, because in any stage, at
any time, there could be somebody stalking your profile and
coming up with an assessment. You know, do I like
this person? Is this the kind of person I would date?
Is this the kind of person i'd be friends with?
What does this very limited information tell me about whether
(20:49):
I should invite this person to my party, whether I
should give this person a job? This goes on. You know,
That's why I look at people with social media with
so much jealousy, because there is so much freedom in
only being known and observed by those you would like
to be around, of being kind of unreachable and untouchable
(21:11):
in a sense. I want to return to something I
mentioned earlier before I rushed past it way too quickly,
which is the idea that one bad moment, one bad decision,
is capable of ruining your entire reputation. We could give
the example of a viral video. It's a perfect example
(21:31):
of that. Where you know, you see videos of somebody
arguing or kicking a puppy or licking a doughnut, if
you get that reference, or somebody just doing something and
it's like their reputation is done for I feel like
the Coldplay cheating scandal was a great example of like
how fast that can happen. A lot of people will
claim it's unfair that one moment means more than a
(21:55):
thousand other moments where somebody was good somebody wasn't doing
something bad, Like why doesn't that count? They may say,
why is this one big moment so important? Well, the
reason those big one off actions loom so large in
the reputational ecosystem in comparison to the millions of good
things or neutral things you've done, is because of one
(22:16):
special ingredient, and that is trust. It's also because of
the significance of what we call character revealing moments, and
it links back to that point about hypocrisy and dishonesty.
People want you to be upfront about who you are
first and foremost, even if who you are as an asshole.
(22:37):
These sliding door moments throw all of that into question,
and that's why they feel so significant. That trust is
hard to get back. You cheat on somebody, you do
something terrible to a friend, it's hard to get that
back because your capacity for doing such things has been revealed,
and it's assumed it was always in you and you
were lying about it. As human beings were also hardwired
(22:57):
to pay attention to those big moments. It's more because
of something known as the negativity bias. This was coined
in two thousand and one by the psychologist Paul Rosen
and Edward Roysman. Rosin and Ruysman, I know, like perfect
names to be collaborators, but you know, like so much
of our behavior, negativity bias like is about survival, and
(23:22):
what it basically says is that if we pay attention
to the worst stuff and we think of that as
more important, we will be safer. You know, hundreds of
years ago, having heightened attention to bad, dangerous negative threats
or bad dangerous negative people in day to day life
was very important, could be a matter of life and death.
So those who noticed danger or bad reputations and paid
(23:44):
more attention to that, they were more likely to survive.
Neuroscience research has shown that there is greater neural processing
in the brain in response to negative stimuli. In studies
conducted by even more psychologists, there's always more participants were
shown pictures of either positive, negative, or neutral images. The
(24:07):
researchers then I think they like observe electrical activity in
the brain, and what they found was that negative images
produced a much stronger response, particularly in the front or lowe,
but in the executive functioning and thinking parts of the brain.
Because negative information causes such a surge in activity in
(24:28):
such a critical information processing area, our behaviors and attitudes
tends to be shaped more powerfully by, as I said,
the bad stuff, the bad news, the bad experiences, the
bad one off than all the other good times that
may outnumber it thousandfolds. So someone who makes a big mistake,
(24:48):
whether they were having a bad day or not, whether
they regret it now or not, whether that's who they
are fundamentally or not, that big mistake is going to
be remembered because of our brains hardwiring. So is this forever?
Does our reputation ever change back? Or is it permanent?
(25:11):
This is really where we are getting into our listener question,
isn't it? What do I do about past mistakes? How
do I convince people I'm not that anymore? There's a
famous quote from Warren Buffett Like the Billionaire, in which
he says it takes twenty years to build a reputation,
it takes five minutes to ruin it. If you think
(25:31):
about that, you'll do things differently. I think that's the
full quote. This is the critical part about reputation. It
can change instantly, often in a negative direction. The positive
direction is a long game and requires very few mistakes.
The reason reputation, once injured is hard to reclaim not impossible,
though it's not impossible. I promise we'll get to that
(25:54):
in a second. But why it's hard to reclaim is
because of two additional bias. Bias is everywhere in this episode.
It is the confirmation bias and the recency bias, and
this is why we sometimes feel stuck with the reputation
we had at nineteen or eighteen. Firstly, confirmation bias is
the tendency to search for, interpret, and recall information that
(26:15):
confirms what we already think. If we form an opinion
that someone is judgmental, even neutral things they say, we
will interpret as matching our preconceived notion of them. They
could say, hey, where'd you get that shirt? Neutral question,
but we could hear it based on our own bias
as where should I avoid shopping so I don't get
(26:38):
that shirt? That shirt looks cheap that shirt, it doesn't
go with you, and you're coloring confirmation bias cemmense reputations
by making people favorite evidence supporting their views whilst ignoring
contradictory data. Meaning again, first impressions or establish beliefs about
(26:59):
a person are so difficult to change, whether it is
fair or not. A twenty twenty two study on how
human's sample evidence to support prior beliefs concluded that this
is likely because we don't like to be wrong. It
takes too much cognitive effort to rewrite our whole opinion
of someone, especially somebody we don't see or know that well.
(27:22):
It takes a lot less effort to just confirm what
we already think and say that's who they are. The
second bias is recency bias. This is when we overemphasize
recent events, recent information, recent historical data more than perhaps
data that is more accurate. This is what I was
(27:44):
talking about before I cringe. I literally lay awake at
night thinking that somebody's last impression of me was formed
when I was eighteen and stupid and the worst version
of myself and not reflective of the person I am now.
I'm older, I'm wiser. I've been to therapy for many,
many hours, and you want to go back, and you
(28:06):
want to say to them like trust me, like I'm
not that person anymore. I'm better than this, I promise you.
But you can't. You can't actually doing that would be harmful.
You just have to be okay with someone's last impression
of you being the worst version of you you ever were,
and trying not to think about it too much, and
just knowing that's just how they see things. You can't
(28:28):
always find it. It's human psychology. The most recent information
we have access to to us is the best information,
according to our brain, is the best information, regardless of
whether there is newer, better information out there that we
just haven't sought out or we just don't have access to.
There are, of course, many consequences of this, and consequences
(28:51):
of having a bad reputation, and I also think we
need to talk about how some of those are deserved.
If someone does harm people and hurts, if that is
a consistent pattern, we want others to notice steer clear.
That is a social good In many ways having about it.
Reputation and the consequences of that also makes people realize
(29:13):
their errors a bad reputation is a form of social
correction that requires people to do better and have accountability.
That's another way that people see it. I think the
hardest part is the instances where a bad reputation is undeserved,
right because spend a lot of time talking about why
a bad reputation is deserved. But anybody who's experienced character
(29:35):
assassination from a friend, a colleague, a family member, nx.
Knows that when someone wants to ruin your life and
ruin your reputation, there are many effective ways they can
do that. And the pain that causes, alongside the unspoken
paranoia that isn't mentioned very often, is intense. You're always
(29:56):
worried like, oh my god, who have they spoken to?
Like what false narratives have they spread? Like you meet
people and you're like have you heard? Have they gotten
to you first? Like have they gotten to you before
my actions have had the chance to And this can
lead to a lot of isolation and also a lot
of self doubt like maybe I am who they say
I am? Like how can I trust myself? And that
(30:18):
quickly spirals into a lot of self gas slighting. Character
assassination is often discussed in psychology, mainly in regards to
political psychology and media psychology, and how false message is
spread through these avenues and spread through media in the
news and whatnot. But it happens on an everyday basis
all the time. So when we return, let's discuss this
(30:43):
critical point, why we can't trust everything we hear about people,
the psychology of second chances, and when, if ever we
should address our negative reputation stay with us. So, following
on from what we spoke about before the break, should
(31:05):
we always believe somebody else's reputation, especially if we don't
know them? Is that a wise social decision? I think
it's worth thinking about who your source is and how
they position the narrative around this individual who you know
or maybe don't know that well. Firstly, people's opinions of others,
(31:27):
again are filtered through their own lens of characteristics and
experiences and the kind of things they prefer or they
don't like in other people. Reputation is a powerful tool,
but it can be distorted by gossip, by jealousy, by malice.
So is your source someone who would benefit from you
thinking a certain way about this other person? That can
(31:49):
be worth considering. Additionally, how does this person speak about
people generally, positively, negatively. I think we all have that
one person in our lives at least. I think we
all have this one person in our lives who is
just pessimistic about everyone. You could be the most angelic
(32:11):
kind individual, they will have something bad to say about you. Now,
does that mean that everybody they possibly meet could be
so evil? Probably not. So you need to really closely
consider their words and know what kind of person they
are before you judge what kind of person they're describing.
I think whilst a reputation can offer a general guide,
it's also often wise to rely on your own personal
(32:34):
experiences of a person, and if necessary, verify through evidence
rather than the other way around, or rather through the
room and mill. Now, this is difficult because we don't
want to fall into the position of like, we don't
want to be the person who's like, well, they were
always nice to me. I don't be that person, especially
if it's a close friend saying like this person hurt
me and they are not apologetic and I can't be
(32:56):
around them listen to them. Use your judgment wise, like,
don't disregard that. But if what you are hearing is
from a distance source, an untrustworthy source, and they can't
give examples, and they seem to be almost gleeful in
their retelling, and they really seem to benefit from this.
Just take a step back and trust your gut and
(33:19):
use your better judgment. The other thing, to consider the
evidence somebody is giving for this person's awful character. How
recent is it and when did these actions occur? Think
about when you hear this, whether you'd like to be
judged by information from that long ago in your own life.
(33:39):
For example, I had somebody tell me the other day
that I shouldn't work with this specific person who they'd
known at fifteen because she had a bad reputation for
being unstable. Firstly, I hate the word on the stable,
and I was like kind of cringed when they said it.
But secondly, I was kind of like, would you want
to be judged by who you were at fifteen? Would
(34:02):
you even recognize who you were at fifteen? Would you
even know what they were thinking about? Probably not. Now,
this obviously stems from a larger debate that humanity has
been having for centuries, which is can people truly change?
And we're not going to answer that completely in this
forty five minute episode. But I think you guys know
(34:23):
me by now, and I think you guys know my
relentless optimism about the human condition, And honestly, I believe
they can. And I believe that if the mistake somebody
made was ten years ago and it wasn't that big
of a deal, they probably have learned from it. The
best accurate indicator for someone's real character is consistent behavior
(34:44):
over time and their personal commitment to growth, rather than
just one specific way of behaving a very long time
ago or at a very specific moment, especially if that
is not a significant moral indicator or value indicator. That mind,
What do we do when you feel like you are
the person I am describing, you are the person with
(35:05):
a bad reputation. Perhaps you recognize that past behavior, your
past behavior, has really hurt people, and you want to
do better. Perhaps with wisdom, you know you've realized, Hey,
I was in the wrong that whole time, like I
made bad calls. Do we go about begging people forgiveness
or do we take a different approach? The biggest thing
(35:27):
you should know is that asking someone to think about
you differently is nothing compared to showing people that you
are different and doing so independently and genuinely. That is
the best thing you can do. Mike Mooney he is
the author of a book called The Reputation Shift. He
(35:50):
says that if you want to change your reputation, it
quote all starts with values, because the authentic link between
what someone stands for and what actions they will take
is the most reliable. We need to commit to what
we believe in and we need to live at minute
(36:10):
by minute as best as we can decide. You know
who am I going to be? Who do I not
want to be? And stick with it and when you
do drop the ball from time to time. Because we're human,
we're fallible. Just remember that most things are fixable if
we own up to it. Own your actions, own your words,
acknowledge what you did wrong, and make a promise to
(36:34):
yourself before you make a promise to others to commit
to being better, and to commit to being better, because
you don't want to be the guy or the gal
or the person who influences other people's experiences in a
negative way. In addition, when we try and mend our reputations,
it can be very easy to think that it just
involves an apology apologies are very easy. Proving yourself even
(37:02):
when nobody asked is much much more valuable. It can
be hard to confront like that, hey, maybe I was
in the wrong, but your reputation will never improve by
trying to fix your reputation. If there is genuinely something
that you are responsible for that you cannot own up to,
it doesn't mean that those things need to be your destiny.
(37:23):
I think that's why we don't like to acknowledge them.
But our brains are amazingly neuroplastic, Like acknowledging something is
what means that you can change that thing. We learn
to change through being open with ourselves about what it
is that we actually don't like or want to improve
and committing to that. I think that's also one of
the benefits of a bad reputation, when you get to
(37:45):
the point of being like, oh my god, I messed up.
Maybe I am that person no one expects better of you,
so you kind of have the piece you need to
actually do the work. But also you get a wake
up call that some people never get or will never
listen to, that maybe I'm not the person I think
I am. Maybe I'm not that great, but at least
I have the opportunity to be better. Some people never
(38:06):
get that choice, and they just assholes for their whole lives. Additionally,
I think there also comes a point where ruminating, obsessing,
and over correcting for your reputation, imagined or real will
just do more damage than good, specifically to you. Nobody
improves from a place of shame. They only improve from
a place of acceptance. Your shame and your guilt, and
(38:28):
you hiding away isn't helping you, and it isn't helping
the people that you have heard. Like to just continually
think badly of yourself and think that's going to make
you a better person, you would be wrong fundamentally as well, Like,
you know who you are and you know that this
was a mistake, You know your intentions. We know our
own guilt, We know that we feel bad, We know
(38:51):
what we want to improve on, whether others think we're
capable of it or not, whether others have made up
full stories about us or not. Our reputations are inevitably
not always up to us, and I think that's why
you sometimes need to take a step back from it
and be like, what do I think about me? And
(39:12):
what do the people closest to me, think about me
when we tend to worry about our reputations, because we
think that everybody is thinking about us all the time,
and we think that our reputations are reflective of our
true identities, and that's why we chronically ruminate. And it
just isn't a good use of our time worrying about
what other people think when you have made a commitment
(39:34):
to being better, or when you know who you are,
actually stops you from being able to be that person.
Do you know what I mean? Like, the obsession with
reputation is what probably leads to a worse reputation because
you get lost from what is critical and deep and
intrinsic about you. If you are feeling suffocated by others opinions,
(39:55):
I think it's important to write down who you would
be if they all disappeared, and who you would want
to be if they were nowhere to be found and
their influence on your life is non existence. Focus on
the people who love you, who know that your character
is pure. Focus on pouring energy into them. Focus on
the people who know that you can change, or who
love you the way that you are. When we have
(40:16):
clarity over who we are, including perhaps the things we
want to improve on. We can ignore our temporary mistakes
and setbacks in the knowledge that we are a work
in progress. We are somebody who is trying their best,
and that actually counts for a lot more than a
(40:37):
good reputation that is based in falsities. So that, my friends,
is a psychology of reputation. I do hope that it
had enough nuance in it. I did want to consider
all perspectives, and I hope to the listener who wrote
in that we adequately answered your question. I think to summarize,
reputation matters people who only rely on reputation, though falling
(41:01):
for a lot of cognitive biases and fallacies. If somebody
has a bad reputation, you know, yes, if it's consistent
behavior and it's accurate, very much worth listening to. There
are people who you be you better believe deserve a
bad reputation, if not a worse reputation. But it's also
important to be critical of where we're hearing that information from,
(41:23):
who benefits from that information, whether it is accurate, and
holistically believe that people can change, and that if we
were to believe that everybody is the mistakes they made
at seventeen and eighteen, especially minor mistakes like none of
us are worth saving, none of us deserve a good reputation.
(41:45):
So if you are kind of ruminating on like, oh
my god, people still think that I am this person
and I've done these bad things, and am I Am
I allowed to even be happy? Am I allowed to
even try to be better? Absolutely? You do. And whether
that is a gateway to a better reputation or not,
it doesn't matter, because you will feel more aligned with
who you are and you will feel more like your
(42:07):
real self. So that is the end of the episode.
Thank you for listening. Thank you to our researcher Lucy
Davidson for her assistance with this episode. I really hope
that you guys enjoyed it. I really hope that you
appreciate it. Did not make a tailor swift reputation reference
or joke Throughout this whole episode, I was trying to
find a way to bring it in, and you know what,
(42:28):
it just never happened. We were being being too serious.
But yeah, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope it's
helped you somebody who also struggles with this. Sometimes I
think we should talk about it more and white reputation
is like this really weird thing that we think about
actually very very often and never talk about. So yeah,
(42:48):
if you relate to this episode, leave a comment down below,
and make sure that you check out an episode on
Netflix if you feel called to do so. We've just
like redone the set and it looks really really cool
and I'm very excited about it. But yeah, there'll be
links in the description. I hope you go check it out.
Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself,
don't worry all too much about your reputation, especially if
you are trying to be better. That is the takeaway,
(43:10):
and we will talk very very soon
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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