# [Thematic Research] A Life Rated by Scores: Does Evaluation Help Us Grow or Hold Us Back?
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Our group, Triangle Group, used Kim Dong-sik’s short story 「인간 평점의 세상」 as the starting point for a presentation in three parts: a reading of the story, inferences about its open ending, and comparisons with everyday life. Together, we ask: **does evaluation help people grow, or confine them to a score?**
## Part 1 · A Society Rated by Scores
**In the story, humans’ enthusiasm for rankings leads a television show to rank a demon last, provoking a curse: after a person dies, a score from 1 to 10 appears above their head. People use it to judge not only the deceased but also their family, company, and occupation, even changing funeral practices. Meanwhile, hostile online comments and jaywalking decline, while donations and good deeds increase.**$^{[1]}$ In our reading, this apparent improvement also involves fear of low scores and other people’s judgments.
**At the end, the top-ranked demon changes the timing of evaluation from death to birth, leaving humanity’s subsequent response to the reader’s imagination.**$^{[1]}$ This change leads to our second question: if someone is labeled before they have acted, how might they understand their effort and future?
## Part 2 · When Scores Become Fixed Identities
Assuming that a score assigned at birth never changes, we imagine three possibilities: entrenched class divisions, weakened morality and effort, and exclusion and resistance. **In his satire of meritocracy, Young connects merit with intelligence and effort.**$^{[9]}$ This prompts us to ask: if evaluation precedes effort and cannot change, how much room does it leave for effort? Both the permanence of birth scores and their social consequences are our group’s inferences, rather than an explicit premise and ending of the story.
On class, **Lee Yong-kwan’s 2018 study analyzes the association between household income and young people’s subjective class consciousness.**$^{[3]}$ We use it as a real-world reference for understanding how background relates to self-perception, rather than treating it as a measure of actual social mobility probabilities. We then imagine that, when scores become fixed identities, people may decide how to treat someone according to their “birth score,” before that person has acted.
On effort, **Seligman and Maier’s animal experiment examined the relationship between uncontrollable experiences and subsequent escape behavior; Dweck’s book discusses beliefs about ability and how people view effort.**$^{[8]}$$^{[5]}$ Drawing on these discussions, we imagine that people with low scores might stop trying, while those with high scores might take their advantages for granted. These studies inform our thinking; they do not directly prove that fictional characters would necessarily behave this way.
On social responses, we imagine that people might hesitate to have children for fear of their birth scores, try to conceal ratings, or resist the rating system. This also offers a comparison with Young’s satire of a meritocratic society.$^{[9]}$ **Sandel’s critique of meritocracy reminds us that attributing success entirely to individual ability can encourage arrogance among the successful and humiliation among those who fall behind.**$^{[2]}$ We therefore consider how evaluation treats people’s circumstances, dignity, and capacity for change.
## Part 3 · From the Context of Numbers to the Allocation of Opportunities
We constructed a hypothetical hospital example: Hospital A has an overall recovery rate of 75%, compared with 78% at Hospital B. Yet A has higher rates in both groups: 60% versus 50% for severe cases, and 90% versus 85% for mild cases. Severe cases account for 50% of A’s patients but only 20% of B’s, reversing the overall comparison. **These invented data illustrate Simpson’s paradox and remind us that understanding numbers requires understanding their composition and context.**
How ratings are produced also matters. **In a hotel experiment, the group shown no information about previous ratings gave an average score of 4.52; a separate group shown information that previous customers had awarded 5 points gave an average of 4.95. The study found that prior-rating information influenced consumers’ rating behavior.**$^{[4]}$ This draws our attention to how ratings can reflect both personal experience and other people’s opinions.
Ratings can also change real opportunities and goals. **The historical arrangements examined in the Uber study linked ratings to deactivation and eligibility for higher pay.**$^{[6]}$ **Research on American law schools explains how ranking pressures change organizational behavior and can obscure the different purposes individual schools serve.**$^{[7]}$ We therefore ask not only how high a score is, but how it was produced, what it is used to decide, and whether raising it still serves the original goal.
## Our Position · Evaluation Should Support Growth
From the fictional society of ratings, through our inferences about fixed identities, to real-world research and examples, one argument connects all three parts: **evaluation should support human growth.** It should recognize effort and change and have a clearly defined scope. Decisions about important opportunities should also consider evidence beyond scores, allow people to explain their circumstances, and leave room for reassessment.
**A score should not close off a person’s future possibilities. How far should we judge a person on the basis of one score?**
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## References
[1] 김동식(2018). 「인간 평점의 세상」. 『양심고백』, 요다, 7–10쪽.
[2] 마이클 샌델(2020). 『공정하다는 착각: 능력주의는 모두에게 같은 기회를 제공하는가』. 함규진 옮김, 와이즈베리.
[3] 이용관(2018). 「청년층의 주관적 계층의식과 계층이동 가능성 영향요인 변화 분석」. 『보건사회연구』, 38(4), 465–491쪽. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.15709/hswr.2018.38.4.465)
[4] Cicognani, S., Figini, P., & Magnani, M. (2016). *Social Influence Bias in Online Ratings: A Field Experiment*. Quaderni – Working Paper DSE, No. 1060, University of Bologna. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.6092/unibo/amsacta/4669)
[5] Dweck, C. S. (2006). *Mindset: The New Psychology of Success*. New York: Random House.
[6] Rosenblat, A., Levy, K. E. C., Barocas, S., & Hwang, T. (2017). “Discriminating Tastes: Uber’s Customer Ratings as Vehicles for Workplace Discrimination.” *Policy & Internet*, 9(3), 256–279. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.153)
[7] Sauder, M., & Espeland, W. N. (2009). “The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational Change.” *American Sociological Review*, 74(1), 63–82. [DOI](https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240907400104)
[8] Seligman, M. E. P., & Maier, S. F. (1967). “Failure to escape traumatic shock.” *Journal of Experimental Psychology*, 74(1), 1–9.
[9] Young, M. (1958). *The Rise of the Meritocracy*. London: Thames and Hudson.
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