Skilled deceivers exploit trustworthiness signals for strategic gain

Evidence

Seventh, the model ignores a particular kind of strategic behavior: deceit. Many people, such as successful con artists and lotharios, may be very good at signaling apparent trustworthiness, because being thought trustworthy opens up potentially valuable opportunities for them (see Bacharach and Gambetta 2001). — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 578

Categorization

• XREF: Deceit exploiting trustworthiness signals parallels the doctor’s wife in Saramago’s Blindness, who relies on being (wrongly) presumed blind to observe and act — signaling and counter-signaling both break in the quarantine. — connects to: Deceptive signaling is evolutionarily widespread across the animal kingdom — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 55; Signaling mastery lets pretenders convert faked status into real status — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 303