Does the messenger matter?: The moderating role of supervisor gender on the relation between supervisor performance feedback and subordinate felt trust.

Workers experience several positive outcomes when they feel trusted by their supervisors – and a key way supervisors communicate trust is through the feedback they give. However, feedback is often interpreted through a lens of stereotypes attached to the giver, and subordinates may react more harshly to negative feedback given by a female supervisor. Unfortunately, the effect of supervisor characteristics (including gender) on subordinate felt trust remains underexplored. To address this gap, we tested the effects of supervisor gender and feedback valence on felt trust. 213 participants completed a firefighting simulation under the supervision of either a female or male research assistant. Participants randomly received either positive or negative performance feedback from the supervisor and then reported their felt trust. Feedback valence was positively related to felt trust. However, supervisor gender moderated this effect. Participants who received positive feedback from a female reported greater felt trust than participants who received the same feedback from a male. Conversely, participants who received negative feedback from a female reported less felt trust than participants who received the same feedback from a male. Both the bolstering effect of positive feedback and the deleterious effect of negative feedback were more pronounced when delivered by a female supervisor.