Post No.: 0951
Furrywisepuppy says:
Reputations are quick and easy to destroy, difficult to build, and are even more difficult to rebuild. Once e.g. uncovered as a liar, others will naturally wonder what else one has lied or will lie about?
Everybody isn’t judged to the same standards though. People with high reputations can barely make a false move (unless they have the greatest PR teams or the alternative candidates aren’t fabulous choices either!) Those with squeaky-clean reputations can themselves feel most mortified for suddenly having a blotch – or even just an allegation of one – on their public standing. Some have unfortunately taken their own lives over it.
Meanwhile, those with lesser or indifferent reputations can conversely pleasantly surprise us with just one moment of goodness or greatness. This is because, to our ‘system one’, our satisfaction depends on our expectations – so if something exceeds our (low) expectations, it’ll pleasantly surprise, while if something falls below our (high) expectations, it’ll sorely disappoint. For committing the same misdeed, we’re going to feel more disappointed about someone we respected and expected more from than someone we didn’t. With more critical thinking, our ‘system two’ is able to understand that a constant liar or cheat is less trustworthy than someone who lies or cheats less often though.
So over-promise or be too ambitious and a fall is easier. Under-promise or aim low and satisfaction is easier. Our expectations are our anchor, and how we feel depends on whether something goes above or below these expectations, hence it can sometimes be advantageous to not make people over-expect things. A politician who has tremendous charm and deceives to get into power, whom we therefore have low expectations of, can more easily get away with spewing constant lies because we don’t expect anything better from them (it’s more ‘oh he/she’s just being him/herself again’ rather than them doing anything that stands out for them). Or the person who seems ‘most improved’ can seem more impressive than someone who was always brilliant from the very start; hence the tactic of sandbagging can work to a person’s advantage.
Under-promising with the hope of over-delivering can only really work if one is already in power or has secured a position though because people will likely turn to someone else if you cannot express a clear road map of your ambitions and vision. If you don’t promise anything at all then the public won’t know what exactly you’re planning to do or how to hold you accountable. This is why, in reality, most politicians over-promise in order to grab attention and votes – but they then face the risk of under-delivering and disappointing the public if they do enter into power, which is what typically happens!
When ahead in the opinion polls, it’s sometimes better to not say much than to say something you might later regret or that makes you appear doltish, hence politicians who are leading such polls just before an actual election may opt to avoid participating in televised debates. Blunders are more memorable than brilliant deeds. It’s sometimes better to be presumed incompetent than to prove it once and for all. However, avoiding the camera too much can result in losing votes because the public may think you’re aloof.
People with high power and status are normally assumed to have high reputations. But high power can lead to an abuse of that power. Even those working for the UN at the highest levels shouldn’t be considered beyond reproach or investigation. Although rare, diplomatic immunity is sometimes abused.
Well reputations are only heuristics for predicting someone’s future behaviour based on their (perceived) past behaviour, and as such they’re not perfect predictors. Every allegation of a person’s wrongdoing should be assessed on a case-by-case basis on its own merits and evidence, but this takes effort hence why we use such cognitive shortcuts.
People should be considered innocent unless proven guilty. Yet this is in tension with trusting what, say, sexual abuse victims/survivors claim. It’s automatic to want to protect one’s own ingroup members against what may damage one’s collective group reputation too, for we’ll be tarred with the same brush, even though we’re separate individuals who should be assessed separately as individuals. One wrong won’t necessarily mean all is wrong; in the same way that one right won’t necessarily mean all is right.
So, many sexual harassment victims/survivors don’t report the abuses they’ve experienced in the hands of those in high-power positions because they each think they won’t be believed because it’ll be their lone word against someone who’s publicly respected. Therefore we cannot just rely on trusting people’s public reputations – even though that’s the point of a reputation!
Pertaining to how one’s public reputation can seem like a life-or-death matter – social embarrassment can feel worse than actual bodily harm. Sometimes the immediate public won’t care if someone fails, or are supportive of those who try but fail, yet the person may themselves still feel an instinctive fear of failure and a strong social pressure to shine. Or they may resort to sandbagging i.e. lowering other people’s expectations of oneself or even purposely handicapping oneself to show that if one fails, it wasn’t because one couldn’t have succeeded but it was because of the self-handicapping, thus preserving the impression that one could have succeeded without the handicap. We tend to shy away from publicly joining in with what we think will show us up as incompetent (e.g. perhaps a bit of competitive Mario Kart at a party if we don’t think we’re good at the game) because of the perceived social costs rather than any other costs. People like and want to win, but failures seem to prove that one is incapable of succeeding, hence why many people are socially risk-averse in order to not prove that they’re incapable of succeeding if they fail, thus they don’t even try – but for not trying, then persisting if they do lose, they’ll never win or improve either. Those with large egos, especially, would rather quit than lose or be fired.
At other times, we don’t like being helped because we think it’ll display our incapability to do something by ourselves.
But whatever one deems embarrassing is always subjective, cultural, and also related to one’s level of knowledge and wisdom e.g. when laypeople encounter unusual skin problems, they may find them embarrassing, but to an educated doctor there’s nothing to be ashamed about them – either because they’ll know how common they really are, that they’re not contagious or always a sign of dirtiness, that they can be treated, they have empathy and/or they understand that it’s not the person’s fault or choice.
It’s not to say we should never be embarrassed or ashamed about anything – these emotions guide us towards avoiding making social errors that may hurt others. But not all social errors hurt others. If they only hurt our own public image – we could own these ‘gaffes’ instead! We don’t have to take ourselves so seriously. Woof!
How we judge others speaks about our own values e.g. of superficiality or pretentiousness if it’s something shallow we’re judging. Our public judgements can also speak of our own private hypocrisies (we might exhibit disgust or laugh at others who were publicly caught doing something we privately do yet publicly pretend we don’t), our own lack of courage if we ridicule someone failing at something that we could never do, or our lesser worldly awareness of the variety of lives, lifestyles and possibilities of culture around the world.
Our quirks aren’t likely to be as unique as we think they are, so we’re not likely to be as odd (or special) as we may think we are. Everyone has their own embarrassing secrets that perhaps are so common they shouldn’t really therefore be embarrassed about them, like maybe what’s in their internet search history?!
But we’re social animals and so our perceived public images matter greatly. Everyone’s trying to carefully manage/manipulate their own image/propaganda because our perceived competence and trustworthiness are more socially valuable to us than our actual competence and trustworthiness – for our reputation can open or close doors for us. Public speaking strikes fear in many people because all the attention is focused on them thus any clanger will definitely be publicly noticed. Our confidence in delivering a viewpoint can persuade the audience more than the content of our arguments (it’s important to present well but I’d say for worse rather than for better here).
We regard anything that humiliates us as a threat to our self-concept and identity. Humiliation dehumanises the humiliated. And the humiliated may take revenge or displace their loss of face with anger and aggression against other groups (usually innocent, easier targets) to try to in turn humiliate these other people in order to boost one’s relative status – because status is relative. This is the basis of bullying or character assassinations. Our low self-esteem can be no one else’s fault though e.g. we notice ourselves that we’re not near the top of the class when the grades are given and we feel personally humiliated because of that, not because anyone else is taunting us over our grades.
Our sensitive private beliefs about ourselves can sometimes result in an overcompensation of behaviour in public. So our lack of internal self-confidence can result in a cocky external image. People act big and clever when they’re not big or clever. Perhaps there’s no clearer way to show what you’re actually not than through the amount of effort you expend to attempt to mimic someone or something else – hence the term ‘pretentious’. Always having and expressing an opinion is to display knowledge and authority, even though one may not have a clue about what one is talking about!
Some people become self-conscious about drinking alcohol (even just a glass – not to get drunk) in the company of others who’ve opted not to. They presume these others will judge them negatively even though they might not. Because judgements are relative, we’d look more like an alcoholic in the above scenario than if those around us drunk the same amount or more.
Perception is what matters with our public image – which is why the difference between public and private knowledge can be enormous. People may hide their bigoted stances in public yet hold covert or implicit biases. People frequently talk behind other’s backs in ways they wouldn’t to their faces. Well being always honest sometimes comes across as being socially rude or disloyal, hence people tell white and blue lies.
People can do things in front of people’s faces they wouldn’t do as much behind them too e.g. conspicuous helping (conspicuous compassion).
We want to appear desirable and trustworthy, and it’s usually the most ‘bad’ that (need to) work the hardest to try to convince the public that they’re ‘good’ via public relations (PR) – like fossil fuel companies promoting how ‘green’ they are. Post No.: 0842 covered how organisations ‘washed’ their reputations.
People aren’t always pretending to be more than what they are. Modesty is common too (although modesty is pretending to be less than what one is thus is nevertheless for the sake of one’s social image or to lower other people’s expectations of oneself (I’m not talking about genuinely thinking one isn’t that good at something because one’s benchmarks are different)). Notwithstanding, people do care about their reputations a lot. Virtually everybody consciously and subconsciously manages their public image and we accept that we all are to one degree or another in order to socially fit in with social norms.
Honesty is common and we tend to be socially trusting, which overall helps as a social species for harmony and efficiency – it saves energy from needing to check every single thing people say.
And hardly everything that’s done secretly or intended to be kept private is due to nefarious reasons, like for security, sensitive information or furry nice surprises!
Woof!
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