Journal of Student Research 2018

25 The Correlates of Trust Amongst Coworkers having a strong trusting relationship with one’s supervisor, would likely result in greater trust amongst one’s coworkers. Similarly, Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) found that trust in one’s supervisor positively predicted trust in one’s coworkers. A small body of research has begun to look for other factors, beyond the supervisors, that may influence the levels of trust between coworkers such as the sex of the members of a group (Skojer-Peterson & Thorssell, 2008) There is a lack of research on correlates of peer-to-peer trust in the workplace. One such predictor of trust is the extent to which there is perceived similarities between coworkers. In a study conducted by Ferguson and Peterson (2015) the impact of perceived similarity was examined in relation to trust. In their study, university students entering a class were assigned to groups. As part of these groups, participants completed assignments and surveys throughout the semester assessing propensity to trust, group trust, relationship conflict, and task performance. Researchers found that greater perceptions of dissimilarity reported in the surveys between team members significantly predicted poor team work. Specifically, dissimilarity amongst group mates led to in-group conflicts, declining levels of trust amongst the group members, and ultimately poor task performance. Ennen, Stark, and Lassiter (2015) conducted a similar study, focusing on the level of perceived similarity between group mates in a class project, the major research question for current research that has examined. Ennen et al. (2015) recruited participants in classes as students that were given a group assignment as part of a psychology course. The students worked together on the project throughout the semester. At three times during the semester participants were asked to rate their experience with the group regarding trust, perceived similarity, as well as team satisfaction. Similar to the findings by Ferguson and Peterson (2015), it was found that ratings of trust tended to be higher between groups who perceived themselves to be more similar to their group mates. Additionally, Ferguson and Peterson (2015) found that groups with higher levels of trust also reported experiencing greater team satisfaction at the end of the semester. Considering the importance of perceived similarity in these classroom-based studies, the current study sought to examine whether perceived similarity was also related to employee ratings of trust. Ennen and colleagues (2015) noted that satisfaction with the team and the classwork completed were positively influenced by the feelings of trust with in the group. Other research also sought to investigate the quality of the work that results from trusting group dynamics. Dirks (1999) examined whether the level of trust in a group affects the performance of