A costlier image-investment threshold paradoxically makes honesty identifiable.

Evidence

To put it more accurately, if the salesman is willing to spend more than 7, and if he does so, he will reveal himself unambiguously as being honest (p will jump to the value of unity). But if yy exceeds 6 there cannot be any such mechanism for raising p in this simple model. If the salesman is honest he will be willing to spend a maximum of 6. The dishonest salesman will be willing to spend more, but if he does he will reveal himself as being unambiguously dishonest! So of course he will not spend more. But if he does not, there is no way for the customer to distinguish the two possible types, and it is precisely because of this that the salesman (no matter which type he is) will not spend resources in improving his image. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 933

Categorization

• XREF: A signaling economics parallel to the reader’s trust monograph: costly observable signals reveal type—mirrors how the doctor’s wife’s sightedness functions as a costly observable constraint in Blindness. — connects to: Social-media authenticity paradoxically invites skeptical questions about wealth’s source. — Alice E. Marwick, Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the…, 68