Levine and Schweitzer’s (2015) research challenges conventional wisdom by suggesting that low honesty can breed high trust. While their work significantly contributes to understanding trustor reactions in either benevolence- or honesty-centric scenarios (examined separately in the Trust and Rely-or-Verify game), it does not address situations where concurrent trustworthiness cues simultaneously influence the trustor’s payoff. We examine the generalisability of their findings by investigating trustor responses to equally relevant but conflicting trustworthiness cues. We replicate the consistent positive impact of benevolent dishonesty in enhancing perceptions of benevolence, while reducing perceptions of honesty and integrity. However, only high benevolence associated with third-party oriented dishonest actions increases trust. High benevolence alone fails to counteract the negative effect of trustor oriented dishonesty. Additionally, benevolence positively moderates the influence of ability, even with low honesty. We discuss two philosophical approaches that uniquely shape trustor decision-making and highlight the limitation of operationalising only partial perceptions of trustworthiness as trust.
