Who You Gonna Trust? The Interaction Effect of Trust and Gender in Workplace Conflict

There is disagreement in trust literature about whether men or women are more trusting. Underlying psychological theory suggests reasons why gender differences may exist: Gender differences have been found in risk taking behavior, self-disclosure behaviors, and interdependency. Findings also suggest that men and women differ in their levels of trust in men and women trustees. This raised the research questions: Which gender trusts more, men or women, and is there an interaction between the gender of the trustor and trustee that influence levels of trust? To examine these research questions, I conducted a secondary analysis of a study in which the participants (the trustors) read a vignette involving the decision to disclose workplace conflict to two supervisors (the trustees), one a man and the other a woman. The results indicated that men and women were equally trusting of the man and woman trustees overall. The results also suggested that there was not an interaction between the gender of the trustor and the gender of the trustee, when predicting overall mean levels of trust. Further exploratory analyses revealed an interaction between the gender of the participant and the manipulated trustworthiness of the supervisor. Gender differences were also found in the comfortability of reporting the conflict to both supervisors and preferences for competing and avoidant conflict styles. These results are consistent with the risk-taking literature and have implications for the workplace and conflict. These results highlight the need for further investigation of the different components that influence gender differences in trust.