Only incentives, not investment, can genuinely change trustworthiness.

Evidence

In general, it seems that, in the end, all that one can invest in is reputation, which is not necessarily correlated with trustworthiness. The only way to actually affect trustworthiness is by changing one’s incentives—for example, by entering into long-term ongoing relationships with those whose trust one would like to have. Hence trustworthiness is not a commodity, even though perceived trustworthiness (that is, reputation) is. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 406

Categorization

• QUESTION: If trustworthiness can only change through incentives, how does the doctor’s wife’s trustworthiness in Saramago arise absent any institutional incentive structure?
• XREF: Long-term ongoing relationships as the lever on trustworthiness connects directly to Milgrom’s repeated-interaction equilibrium.
• DEEPTHINKING: Central paradox: reputation (perceived) can be invested in, but trustworthiness itself resists investment—only incentive-shaping works. This inverts the usual intuition that being more trustworthy is a matter of investment.