Assignment Seven - Reputation Systems (Katie Dreier)

People pride themselves on a positive reputation. In a sorority, a good reputation tends to beget many friends who will respect and trust you. According to the Bos article, “without trust, partners will not share information openly” (135). Those who trust each other are more likely to form close friendships and a tight knit group as they tend to act cooperatively in a group environment and thereby “ensure maximum group benefit” (Bos 136). Therefore, trust can be defined as “a willingness to be vulnerable, based on positive expectations about the actions of others.” These positive expectations are confirmed by a person’s reputation based on their previous actions. A system can help confirm a person’s reputation by keeping track of people’s perceptions of the person’s past behaviors. According to Resnick, “a reputation system collects, distributes, and aggregates feedback about participants’ past behavior.” Simply put, when past behavior gets added up and people notice a positive trend, a good reputation forms and trust increases. A popular characteristic of sorority life is the chance to form the strong bonds of a sisterhood among your sisters. Trust is a key ingredient in guaranteeing this bond.
In my sorority’s pledge class, we have a reputation system that is not based solely on our personalities, rather on our actions. We use a point system. Sisters are rewarded for desirable behaviors such as attending events, dedicating hours to philanthropy events, and doing favors for sorority sisters through points. Sisters who no longer need to earn points monitor the system. This ensures that someone greedy for more points will not manipulate the system. The ranking of points is a well-balanced, well-respected system among the sisters. A large amount of points is directly related to how involved you are in the house. Because the system is not based on our personalities, sisters with less points are not disrespected, it merely means they may not have as tight bonds with other sisters as they probably haven’t spent as much time in the house and at events with other sisters. This FtF time that they’ve missed out on “decreases social distance … and makes trust agreements easier to form and maintain” and will make it harder to build trust with the other sisters (Bos 135).