ABSTRACT
The best thing is to be consistently trustworthy in all aspects all the time – that is, by building a track record and earning goodwill. This chapter explores how trustworthiness is related to predictability, orderliness and consistency. Predictability is a local as well as a global matter, and a general as well as a personal concern for participants. The core of the breaching experiment that the wife exposed her husband to here was not to do the expected: namely, to produce an acknowledgment or co-assessment or sympathetic remark of sorts, but instead to inquire about the type of tiredness or the kind of movies, and to insist on asking follow-up questions until he specifically objected to it. Consistency – or rather, the lack of it – is also a resort. Participants may resort to claims of their own inconsistency when they are defending themselves against negative implications, or resisting accusations.
