Trust in organizations, institutions and leaders is on the decline. Yet trust remains a crucial factor in many workplace decisions — from who we hire and promote to who we choose to partner with.

That’s partly why Rotman professor of organizational behaviour Stéphane Côté wanted to investigate the role that social class plays in forming our opinions of trustworthiness. “It's important to understand this so that we can document if there are biases distinct from reality,” Côté explains. “It could lead to quite a few unfair decisions and people not getting jobs that they deserve.”

In his latest study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Côté and his co-authors examined how both childhood class background and current class status influence perceptions of trust.

The researchers studied whether perceptions of trust change depending on whether the individual came from a lower-class upbringing compared to an individual who was currently living in a lower-class context.

Côté — along with co-authors Kristin Laurin, Holly R. Engstrom, Toni Schmader, Khai Qing Chua and Nadav Klein — used behavioural and economic games, for example, asking participants how much money they were willing to lend to a partner in hopes of having it tripled and shared. They also used hypothetical scenarios, such as whether participants would trust someone to take care of their cat while they were away. The social class of each partner was manipulated by sharing short descriptions of their upbringing or current circumstances.

Across the studies, participants consistently trusted lower-class partners more than higher-class ones — but the reasons varied depending on whether the partner came from a lower-class childhood or was currently living in lower-class circumstances.

People who grew up lower class were seen as more moral, which led participants to trust them more with money. In contrast, people who were currently lower class inspired trust because participants felt they needed it more, even though they were not necessarily expected to reciprocate.

“They're more altruistic towards people who are currently lower class, so they want to give more and act in a more trustworthy way,” says Côté. “The reason is they believe that the currently lower-class person needs your trust more.”

While the researchers were curious about how the patterns of mobility would impact trust, for example, whether someone who grew up lower-class but was currently upper-class was deemed more trustworthy, they found little evidence to support this. “Mobility doesn’t seem to matter,” Côté explains. “People appear to consider where you stand currently separate from where you come from.”

Côté says that their study has several practical implications in the working world. “It does look like we use our perceptions of other people's social class as a cue, consciously or unconsciously, in terms of deciding whether to trust,” he explains. (Their study didn’t look into whether class is a valid cue — as in, whether or not trustworthiness is correlated with class.)

Côté notes some people might use a perceived lower-class upbringing to their advantage. “Politicians do this a lot,” he says. “They will emphasize their lower-class roots. And our research is consistent with the fact that voters see that very favourably, and that may be because of trust.”

He reminds people in business environments — for example, hiring managers — to be aware that cues about class can influence their decisions. “What we recommend to reduce all biases is having a very clear set of criteria for the job,” Côté says. “Ask a specific set of questions that are job related, and ask the same questions to the different candidates. Don't ask questions that are open-ended, like, ‘tell me about your life’, because that's where some of this biasing information could be shared.”

Even just having awareness of the power of social class information on trust is powerful, according to Côté. “People might think, ‘That wouldn’t affect my judgment’,” he says. “That's a core contribution of the paper — to show that your trust decisions are often based, in part, on what you think the other person's class is.”