Engeler, Nicole Clair; (2024) Reputation in everyday life. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Humans are a remarkably cooperative species, and it has been proposed that this cooperation evolved in part due to reputational costs and benefits. While existing studies on reputation often rely on controlled simulations and short economic game experiments, my research delves into real-world contexts, exploring how individuals shape and perceive reputations. Using a daily diary phone app, Chapter 2 investigates how reputation management varies across social relationships and situational contexts in everyday life. Findings were comparable to laboratory and field reports, additionally showing that social relationship factors influence reputational concern more than social visibility cues. Chapter 3 examines the reputational consequences of punishing in daily life. I used a weekly survey study conducted across six weeks to determine the factors that have the greatest impact on a punisher's reputation. Results revealed that justness and attributed motives of punishing influenced a punisher’s reputation most. Chapter 4 asks how accurate people are at knowing how their cooperative and uncooperative actions influence their reputation. I examined meta-accuracy (whether people know the relative impression they make on others) and meta-bias (whether they systematically under- or over-estimate how favourably they are perceived). In Chapter 5, I first used vignettes to investigate the motivations that observers attribute to punishers, and then solicited descriptions of recent punishing behaviours to discover whether observers’ motive attributions match punishers’ actual motives (observer accuracy) and whether punishers exhibit meta-accuracy. In Chapter 6, I present the results of a registered report, using five economic game experiments to determine how deliberating over personal cost and target impact signals trustworthiness in punishment and helping contexts. Collectively, these studies aim to provide insight into how individuals strategically navigate social interactions to manage their reputation across diverse scenarios, with a particular focus on ecologically valid investigations of cooperation and punishment.

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