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You and a colleague can work with the same person for months and come away with very different views of whether they can be trusted. One of you thinks they are reliable, the other is wary. Is one of you wrong? A 2025 study suggests that the difference may often lie as much in the person doing the judging, and what they know, as in the person being judged. The study cannot tell you who is right in any real case.

What the researchers did

The study was written by a researcher at the University of Florida and published in October 2025 in Scientific Reports. Most models of trust at work focus on the qualities of the person being trusted, such as their ability, goodwill and integrity. An earlier study had suggested that differences between the people doing the trusting could matter even more. This study set out to test that idea further.

The author added a measure of how much contextual information the person doing the trusting had about the other person. The work was done in two stages. An exploratory study with 334 participants built and examined four explanatory models. These were then cross-checked in an independent study with 815 participants. The researcher used structural equation modelling, a way of testing how several measured factors relate to each other. The study looked at co-worker trust.

The abstract does not say where the participants were from or how they were recruited.

What they found

When direct and indirect effects were both counted, the unique differences between the people doing the trusting explained much more of the variation in trust outcomes than the unique differences between the people being trusted. This held across the exploratory and the validation samples.

The author draws the conclusion that trust is not explained mainly by how trustworthy the other person is perceived to be. Put another way, the same colleague can be seen differently by two people, and that gap in trust reflected characteristics of the observers more than of the colleague.

A central idea in the study is information. How much someone has seen of a colleague, and in what situations, affects how they judge them. Two people can have watched very different slices of the same person’s behaviour.

The abstract does not give effect sizes or percentages for these comparisons, so this article does not either.

What this does and does not show

This is a questionnaire-based study, so it describes patterns across groups of people. It cannot tell you why you in particular trust or distrust a particular colleague, and it does not suggest that your concerns are imaginary. If a colleague has behaved in a way that worries you, that behaviour matters. The study does not say that a leader’s or colleague’s conduct is unimportant, only that perceived trustworthiness is not the whole story of trust.

The finding is also statistical. Saying that differences between trusting people explained more of the variation than differences between trusted people does not mean the trusted person’s behaviour is irrelevant in a specific case. Trust ratings are also reports by the person, rather than measures of what the other person is really like.

The abstract does not say what kinds of workplaces or countries the people came from, so we cannot say whether the pattern would hold in an Australian workplace. Workplace rules and cultures differ, and nothing here is Australian workplace or legal advice. If you have a concern about someone’s conduct, your employer’s policies or a union or advisory service can tell you what applies to you.

There is a practical thought in it for teams. If trust partly reflects how much each person knows about a colleague, then sharing information, working together on small tasks, and talking openly about how decisions were reached may narrow the gaps between people. That is an idea the study raises, not one it tested.

Questions to ask

• What have I actually seen of this colleague’s work, and what is based on second-hand stories or one or two moments?
• If a colleague I respect sees this person differently, what might they know or have experienced that I have not?
• Is my wariness about something this person has done, or is it about something in me, such as a past experience at work, that I can name?

If conflict at work is affecting your wellbeing, consider speaking with your doctor or another qualified health professional. In Australia, Lifeline is on 13 11 14, and 000 is for emergencies.

Source: Understanding what really drives trust in the workplace and the importance of trustor characteristics as predictors of co-worker trust DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-17397-0

Conceptual illustration of different perspectives on workplace trust. AI-generated editorial illustration. This article summarises published research in our own words and is general information, not personal health advice.