Social and psychological nature of reputation

The paper deals with methodological questions of imagology, namely with the relationship between the concepts of «reputation» and «image». The paper proves that reputat.ion is a structural characteristic of group consciousness performing the function of actual organization of meanings and meaningful components of group consciousness of a virtually acting social group. The paper also considers the causes determining the content and meanings of reputation, such as the features of ethnic mentality, the reflection of objective life conditions, and the synergistic nature of reputation.