Liberal versus conservative distrust: A construal-level approach to dissimilarity in the workplace

The dramatic rise in political polarization and aggravation of race relations are prominent in the United States. While dissimilarity to others is thought to undermine trust, I challenge the assumption that dissimilarity does so uniformly in the workplace where cross-party and cross-race interactions are structurally induced. Leveraging construal-level theory, I theorize that deep- versus surface-level differences with a coworker interact with ideology to activate higher versus lower construals of trustworthiness, prompting liberals and conservatives to distrust their coworkers in different ways. For liberals, I argue that perceived political dissimilarity undermines perceived person trustworthiness (a higher level/abstract construal, capturing one's trustworthiness generally as a person in the world) and disclosure. For conservatives, I argue that perceived racial dissimilarity undermines perceived role trustworthiness (a lower level/concrete construal, capturing one's trustworthiness specifically in their job) and reliance. Study 1 (a proof of concept) and Study 2 (a longitudinal, dyadic field study) utilize inductive theory-building and exploratory analyses. Studies 3a, 3b(i), and 3b(ii) (three preregistered experiments) support my hypotheses: Liberals tend to view politically dissimilar coworkers as less trustworthy people in the world and refrain from disclosures, while conservatives tend to view racial outgroup coworkers as less trustworthy in their jobs and refrain from reliance. Given liberal and conservative employees' roles in the calcification of political and racial group cleavages, respectively, organizations must determine whether both forms of bias should be addressed-indeed, racial bias is socially unacceptable, whereas political bias is widely tolerated-and, if so, whether interventions should target employees based on ideology. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).