Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh, available in the public domain

I’m still fixated on the concept of taste, as I blogged about recently after watching an Ira Glass video about content creators and the need for good taste.  Taste is also something that I’ve been thinking about a bit since having read Trust Agents.  Demonstrating good taste is a way to get people to trust you, especially if they’ve never met you before.

Dictionary.com has the following meanings for the noun taste:

• A relish, liking, or partiality for something: a taste for music.
• The sense of what is fitting, harmonious, or beautiful; the perception and enjoyment of what constitutes excellence in the fine arts, literature, fashion, etc.
• The sense of what is seemly, polite, tactful, etc., to say or do in a given social situation.
• One’s personal attitude or reaction toward an aesthetic phenomenon or social situation, regarded as either good or bad.
• The ideas of aesthetic excellence or of aesthetically valid forms prevailing in a culture or personal to an individual: a sample of Victorian taste; I consulted only my own taste in decorating this room.
• The formal idiom preferred by a certain artist or culture; style; manner: a façade in the Baroque taste.

The common thread running through these definitions is our preference and liking for things, which is often (or often seems to be) reflected in what we say and what we do.

Taste is an important signal. In simple terms, our taste is a defining characteristic and informs other people about the kind of person we are.  Our signals of the things that we like or dislike provide clues to other people who meet us and allow them to form judgments about us.  The clothes we wear, the books we read, the wines we drink, the music we listen to and the subjects that we Tweet about, rightly or wrongly, seem to demonstrate our tastes and help other people determine whether we should be friend, foe, or invisible.  Maybe the first punk rock song that you heard made you spike your hair, pierce your nose, get tattooed, and generally develop an anti-social attitude (pardon the stereotyping, just trying to come up with a memorable example) – that demonstrates one kind of tastes.  Perhaps seeing that a celebrity likes a certain kind of shirt turns you on to the same shirt – if they like it, it must be good, right?.  Seeing someone drinking Miller Beer may give one impression; drinking 30 year old Scotch may give another.  Seeing similar tastes can help build liking, if not trust, early on.

However, taste isn’t an absolute indicator.  A tomboy might enjoy wearing beautiful dresses in the right environments.  A lumberjack could be an avid knitter.  Julia Child liked cheeseburgers.  Many of us have tastes that run from exquisite to barbaric.  For example, I’m one of three people in the world who really liked the movie version of the 1960s TV series The Avengers. I like good fiction in all forms, but I love the 70s series Space:1999 so much that I’d like to make a new version of it, despite the fact that I’m not a TV or movie pro.  I love good food but I can eat McDonalds food occasionally and enjoy it.  And so on.  When you see someone enjoying crap, for want of a better word, you might miss the good stuff that they like.

Nonetheless, taste can work for you.  If nothing else, it can lead to a handshake, a conversation, and a card exchange.  It’s worth remembering that our public displays of taste help define us in the eyes of others.  It’s not the only factor, but it’s definitely one worth remembering.