Journal of Student Research 2018

27 The Correlates of Trust Amongst Coworkers and colleagues (2015) study, trust was examined using four measurements of trust designed by Costa and Anderson (2011): propensity to trust, perceived trustworthiness, cooperative behaviors, and monitoring behaviors (Ennen et al., 2015). It is important to note that one difference between the Ennen et al. (2015) study and the current study is that the current study is only examining participants after the completion of the task. Ennen and colleagues were able to assess students at multiple times throughout the semester. Propensity to trust is the willingness to trust others before even meeting them. This type of initial trust is considered to be an individual difference characteristic that someone brings with them to new situations (Ennen et al., 2015). Perceived trustworthiness refers to the expectation of others to be and to behave based on current information (Costa & Anderson, 2011). What that individual does and says contributes to the perceived trustworthiness that they are assumed to have. Perceived trustworthiness is a subcomponent of the trust instrument that asked participants to evaluate the likelihood that their group members were trustworthy based on how they have interacted together thus far as a group. It is to be noted that the subcomponents propensity to trust and perceived trustworthiness are very similar. To differentiate the two, the propensity to trust is an initial trust given to someone before interacting with them. This is also considered the amount of trust and good intentions that one has for people, for example, assuming that others do not have bad intentions. Perceived trustworthiness, on the other hand, is trust that one assumes another to have after at least one interaction with that person. Given the reflective nature of the current study, it was anticipated that the responses to each of these measures would be quite similar, since we were unable to measure individual perceptions prior to meeting their work groups. Cooperative behaviors, the third subcomponent of the trust measure, is the number of positive interactions an individual has with their group members. A greater number of such positive interactions indicate a willingness to rely on one another and communicate openly about work and accept each other’s opinions (Costa & Anderson, 2011). One way that teammates can cooperate is through reciprocity, the idea that others will return a favor (in this case the offering of trust). When trust is not reciprocated, a lack of collaborative effort often develops amongst teams (Ferguson & Peterson, 2015). The fourth measure of trust used by Ennen and colleagues (2015) and the current study is monitoring behaviors. Monitoring behaviors refers to the amount of control that a team member feels they need to have in the group for the team to successfully work together and complete a task. In the past, monitoring has been found to be negatively correlated with trust because it can lead to members of the group working to protect