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Abstract
Why do people trust? To this point, the literature has focused on only two answers to that question: because they are trusting and because others are trustworthy. Although those answers are supported by meta-analytic research, they omit other potentially powerful answers. For example, trust may stem from a desire to help employees develop, to conform to norms of ethical and responsible behavior, to encourage the formation of meaningful relationships, to appear to be a developmental and empowering supervisor, or out of necessity. Drawing on the decision making and motivation literatures, I theorize supervisors have motives to trustreasons they are willing to be vulnerable apart from being trusting and because their employees are trustworthy. Using a theory of motivated reasoning and an appraisal theory of affect, I build and test a model that proposes supervisors motives are an additional base of trust in their employees. I test my predictions in a field study with four organizations in China.