Another researched gender difference is found in the way men and women make decisions. Men tend to rely on more general information when making decisions, whereas women rely on more specific information. Men also attempt to hide or ignore their weaknesses, as contrary to women, who are more willing to discuss their weaknesses and more open to personal conversations (Dubé & Morgan, 1996; Wang, Kim, & Milne, 2016). These gender differences and even “accurate stereotypes” could suggest that female supervisors and subordinates are likely to have high-quality LMX, as a result of their relationship-oriented approach. Varma and Stroh (2001) indeed suggested that women may like working with women better, because communication is likely to be more fluent between women. They also argue that female supervisors, compared to male supervisors, are more willing to rate the performance of female subordinates higher. These results are contradictory to the findings of the study conducted by Adebayo and Udegbe (2004).

The similarity-attraction paradigm

Investigated and conceptualized by Clore and Byrne (1974), the similarity-attraction paradigm states that sharing certain characteristics has a positive effect on relationships. In other words, people are more attracted to people who are similar, rather than dissimilar, to themselves. This could mean that sharing a demographic characteristic such as gender, could affect LMX relationships positively. Indeed, Wayne, Shore, and Liden (1997) suggest that gender significantly and positively impacts the feeling of similarity, and thus subordinate’s evaluation of supervisors. Vice versa, supervisors who see a higher degree of similarity between them and a subordinate, are more likely to categorize this subordinate into an in group. Consistent with these results, Varma and Stroh (2001) found that same-sex dyads reported higher ratings of LMX, and that in both in and out groups, the majority seems to consist of same-sex members. They found that being in a same-sex dyadic relationship significantly predicted a leader’s interpersonal affect. Moreover, female subordinates with female leaders received higher LMX scores than male subordinates with male leaders. This supports the notion that female-female dyads are of highest LMX quality. This could be because of the fact that they invest more time and attention to relationships, making communication betwe