The Value of Reputation

When it comes to human interactions, if we already know a person’s reputation, there is much less friction and anxiety. Based on reputation, we can usually predict the other person’s behavior, and this leads us to make educated decisions about how to interact with them. When the other person has a good reputation, we can let our guard down a bit. When the reputation is not as good, we know that we need to be cautious, or avoid the person altogether.

Reputation also serves as an important feedback mechanism that incentivizes people to behave honestly. If I know that my interaction with you will impact my reputation, I’m much more likely to keep my word, be friendly, be understanding etc. However, if I know that you cannot affect my reputation in any way, I might decide to cheat or be dishonest in some other way.

Throughout most of human history, we interacted predominantly with people whose reputation we already knew. We lived in small villages or towns, moved rarely, and knew everyone around us from an early age. We knew who in the village could be trusted and who would try to cheat the first time they had the opportunity. This system worked well, but it had one major drawback — it left little room for privacy. If you live in a small community, you know everything about everyone — but everyone also knows everything about you.

This leads us to a modern world. We deal with a lot more strangers than we ever have. With the prevalence of the digital information age, we can easily interact with folks all over the world, whether it’s for casual conversation or business. At the same time as our appetite and opportunity for interaction with strangers has increased, so has our value of privacy. As much as we would like to know everything about the stranger and their reputation, our primal instinct is to protect our own private information. We value our privacy, since if the stranger turns out to be a bad apple, and they have access to our private information, it could result in problems for years to come.

So the question for the modern age is how do we share and grow our reputation without compromising our privacy? How do we learn about the actions that are guided by people’s personal CREDO, without fully exposing ourselves?

We believe we have found the answer to this modern question. In our next blog we will outline our solution of sharing and growing your reputation without compromising your privacy. Check us out on https://www.Credo360.com !