Reputation Management and Idea Appropriation

Altay, Sacha, Yoshimasa Majima, and Hugo Mercier. 2019. “It’s My Idea! Reputation Management and Idea Appropriation.” PsyArXiv. October 1. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3p8k2

Abstract: Accurately assessing other’s reputation, and developing a reputation as a competent, honest, fair individual—epistemic and moral reputation—are critical skills. One way to gain epistemic reputation is to display our competence by sharing valuable ideas, especially if we appropriate these ideas—i.e. present them as being our own, whether that is the case or not (H1). However, idea appropriation should also entail some risks, otherwise it would lose its quality as a reliable signal. In particular, appropriating a bad idea should damage one’s epistemic reputation (H2), and being caught appropriating someone else’s idea should damage one’s moral reputation (H3). As a consequence, people should be more likely to appropriate ideas they think are good when they are motivated to display their competence (H4), and they should refrain from doing so when the odds of getting caught increase (H5). Six online experiments (N = 904) find support for these hypotheses. To assess the reliability and generalizability of these findings, we suggest replicating them with heightened statistical power among similar English-speaking participants (in the UK, US, and Ireland), and among Japanese participants.