03-11-2026
Propensity to trust — defined as a stable, dispositional willingness to trust others — has long been recognized as a critical predictor of workplace outcomes. Research shows it independently influences interpersonal trust, social exchange quality, job satisfaction, justice perceptions and negotiation strategy.
Yet existing measures have struggled in three important ways, says Daniels School Professor David Schoorman, who coauthored the study with Purdue OBHR alumni Hwee Hoon Tan, Kinshuk Sharma and Roger C. Mayer. As they describe in “Towards a Psychometrically Sound and Culturally Invariant Measure of Propensity to Trust,” which received a 2025 Editor Commendation from the Journal of Business and Psychology, reliability and validity have been inconsistent.
First, widely used scales often fell below accepted statistical thresholds, particularly outside U.S. samples, raising concerns about whether they were accurately capturing the construct of trust.
Second, conceptual confusion has clouded the field. Many measures used the word “trust” directly in survey items (for example, “Most people can be trusted”), allowing respondents to interpret the term in their own way. Others relied heavily on negatively worded, reverse-coded items, (for example, “I cannot trust my supervisor”), which can distort responses — especially across cultures that process counterfactual or negatively framed language differently.
Finally, despite widespread international research, few scales were tested for cultural invariance. For example, the statement “I feel free to challenge my supervisor with new ideas” may be considered rude or insubordinate in some cultures. Without confirming that a measure functions the same way across regions, comparisons across countries become questionable.
In a globalized business landscape, these shortcomings are more than academic. They undermine leaders’ ability to interpret survey data confidently and to make sound strategic decisions based on it.
One of the study’s most important insights is that propensity to trust, which is dispositional, is an important component of relational trust especially early in relationships. Employees enter organizations with different baseline levels of willingness to rely on others, and those tendencies shape collaboration, delegation, negotiation style and perceptions of fairness.
For leaders, this means that not all resistance is political or strategic. Some individuals are simply more cautious by disposition. Recognizing these differences can strengthen onboarding processes, improve team formation and make change management efforts more effective. Integrating validated measures of trust propensity into leadership development programs or team diagnostics can help surface these differences and create more realistic expectations about how quickly trust will form.
Global teams amplify the need for precision. Without culturally invariant tools, organizations risk misinterpreting engagement scores, trust climate assessments or psychological safety data across regions. A translated survey is not necessarily a comparable one.
Leaders should periodically examine whether the instruments used in global talent analytics have been tested for cross-cultural invariance, not simply adapted linguistically. Treating measurement rigor as a core element of organizational analytics ensures that differences observed across countries reflect real variation rather than methodological noise.
The research also highlights the pitfalls of negatively framed or reverse-coded trust items. Such phrasing can introduce bias and cognitive strain, particularly in cross-cultural contexts. When organizations design internal surveys, emphasizing positively framed, behaviorally specific items — and avoiding abstract labels like “trust” — can improve clarity and data quality. The way trust is measured influences what leaders believe about their culture.
Propensity to trust shapes how people approach negotiation and exchange. Individuals high in dispositional trust are more likely to engage collaboratively, while those lower in trust may default to verification-heavy or defensive strategies. In high-stakes negotiations, mergers or cross-border integrations, baseline differences in trust propensity can quietly influence outcomes. Assessing these tendencies within and across teams can help leaders anticipate friction points and design more effective engagement strategies.
Finally, the study reinforces that measurement quality directly affects strategic decision-making. Leadership pipelines, global assignments, alliance partnerships and cultural integration initiatives often rely on survey data. When the underlying measures are flawed, decisions built upon them may also be compromised.
In the end, psychometric rigor is not an academic technicality. It is a strategic business asset. Organizations that measure trust well are better positioned to build it deliberately.
