Reputation means changing beliefs, not merely incentive-compatible behavior

Evidence

But while this example fits in part the notion of trust as I have defined it, it captures only one aspect of the idea of trust, namely that customers can trust the salesman to hand over a reliable car. It cannot convey the idea of the salesman trying to acquire a reputation for honesty — trying, through his behaviour, to alter people’s perception of what kind of person ‘he really is’. For notice that in the foregoing infinitely repeated game customers do not revise their opinion of him. They know he is dishonest (in the sense of having the pay-off structure of figure 4.1) and behaves honestly only because of the punishment (loss of customers) that will be meted out to him should he never renege. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 966

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• XREF: The central conceptual distinction in the chapter — reputation as belief-revision versus behavior-deterrence. This is the crux separating incentive-based cooperation from genuine trust, which maps onto Hardin’s definition of trust as encapsulated interest versus mere constraint.
• DEFINE: Defines what ‘acquisition of a reputation for honesty’ means — honest behavior sustained by threat is not genuine reputation, only belief-shifting behavior is.

Related

• Reputation-building is a deliberate investment of foregone gains (similarity 0.88)
• Reputation for honesty is built through costly investment against short-term interests (similarity 0.86)
• Building an honesty reputation requires each act be recorded and observable by future partners (similarity 0.85)
• Reputation is a public inference of disposition from background and behavior (similarity 0.85)
• Trustworthiness begets trust via reputation and repeated dealings (similarity 0.85)
• Reputation building requires sacrificing short-term gains for future returns (similarity 0.84)
• Reputation functions as a commodity that assures others one will honor commitments (similarity 0.84)
• Reputation is the public inference of another’s qualities from imperfect observed data (similarity 0.83)
• Acting on mistaken assumptions about reputation can still yield trust (similarity 0.83)
• Reputation for honesty arises only when actions are recorded and observable (similarity 0.83)
• One can invest only in reputation, never directly in trustworthiness (similarity 0.83)
• A trustworthy reputation can be exploited because it is imperfectly known (similarity 0.83)
• Trust requires repeated encounters, memory, costly honesty, and earned reputation (similarity 0.83)
• Reputation effects can substitute for direct iterated exchange in producing trustworthiness (similarity 0.83)
• Pure reputation models collapse because dishonest actors can mimic honest behavior perfectly (similarity 0.82)

Broader Connections

• Trust requires belief in the other’s motivations, not mere behavioral expectation #corroborates (0.85) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 101
• Trustworthiness beliefs are updated through a Bayesian-style learning process. #expands (0.80) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 527
• Trust is a theory about another’s future performance based on their claims #corroborates (0.80) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 529
• Reputation-building is a deliberate investment of foregone gains #qualifies (0.75) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1005
• Reputation substitutes for truth in scientific and cognitive contexts #expands (0.72) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 736