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Working alongside a colleague who constantly logs long hours and sacrifices personal time can drive coworkers to increase their own productivity while privately complaining about the overachiever. A new paper published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior reveals that the mere presence of a workaholic peer elevates performance pressure, prompting others to work harder but also to badmouth their colleague. This ripple effect is especially strong when observers believe the workaholic is driven by personal ambition rather than a desire to help the team.
Psychologists define workaholism as a compulsive, excessive need to work. For decades, academic inquiries into the topic focused on how this tendency harms the individual, often pointing to burnout, health problems, and disrupted personal lives. Very little research has examined how one person’s workaholism shapes the daily experiences of the people working next to them.
Lead authors Jun Gu of Macquarie University and Zhuolin She of Renmin University of China, along with their colleagues, wanted to understand the social impact of extreme work habits. In a shared office environment, employees naturally compare their own output to that of their peers, a concept known as social comparison theory. Because a workaholic colleague sets an unusually high benchmark, observers often feel an implicit demand to keep pace.
The research team suspected that witnessing a workaholic in action would generate performance pressure among bystanders. They also proposed that the intent behind the long hours matters, drawing on attribution theory, which explores how people explain the causes of others’ behavior. If a coworker is working late to secure a promotion or a bonus, which the researchers term a proself motive, the behavior might feel threatening.
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Conversely, if the extra effort is aimed at helping the whole department succeed, a prosocial motive, the behavior might be viewed more favorably. When adjustment to a new performance benchmark feels unsustainable, employees often deploy defensive tactics. The researchers hypothesized that frustrated coworkers would express their disdain by badmouthing the workaholic peer, using criticism to offset the pressure they experience.
To test these ideas, the researchers designed a series of three studies drawing on four samples. The first took place over four weeks and involved 316 financial services representatives and 56 supervisors at a bank in China. At the start of the study, the representatives reported their general workplace stress and tendency to badmouth colleagues, establishing a baseline.
A week later, each representative evaluated the work habits of one randomly selected coworker. They rated the coworker’s level of workaholism and judged whether their underlying motives were proself or prosocial. In the third week, the representatives reported how much performance pressure they felt when interacting with that specific coworker.
Finally, in the fourth week, supervisors rated the representatives’ work effort, while the representatives reported how often they had badmouthed the focal coworker. The results showed that representatives experienced heightened performance pressure when paired with a workaholic colleague. This pressure translated into higher supervisor-rated work effort and increased badmouthing.
The effects were highly dependent on how the representative viewed their coworker’s intentions. When the workaholic was seen as driven by personal gain, the resulting performance pressure was strong. When the extra work was viewed as an effort to help the team, the relationship between the coworker’s workaholism and the observer’s performance pressure was not statistically significant.
While the field study captured real-world dynamics, the researchers needed to conduct controlled experiments to establish direct cause and effect. In their second study, they recruited 228 working adults in the United States to read a hypothetical workplace scenario.
Participants were asked to imagine working with a colleague named Pat. Depending on the experimental group, Pat was described as either exhibiting extreme workaholism or having a healthy work-life balance. The scenario also randomly assigned Pat’s underlying motivation, describing the fictional coworker as either striving for a personal bonus or working hard to ensure the company’s collective success.
After reading the prompt, participants answered questions about how much performance pressure they would feel in that situation, how hard they would work, and how likely they were to badmouth Pat. The findings mirrored the field study. High workaholism generated intense performance pressure, increased work effort, and more badmouthing, but only when Pat’s motives were framed as selfish.
To ensure these experimental results translated to real people rather than just fictional characters, the research team conducted two recall experiments with employed business students. In the first recall experiment, 372 participants were instructed to think about an actual coworker they had interacted with over the past month.
Participants were randomly assigned to recall a colleague who fit one of four specific profiles, mixing high or low workaholism with personal ambition or team success. After writing a short essay about this person, the participants rated the performance pressure they felt when working alongside them. Once again, recalling a highly workaholic coworker who was motivated by self-interest produced elevated levels of performance pressure.
The final experiment isolated the effects of performance pressure itself. The researchers asked 142 business students to recall a real coworker who made them feel either very high or very low pressure to perform well.
After detailing their experiences with this individual, the participants rated their own work effort and their tendency to badmouth that specific colleague. Participants who recalled a high-pressure colleague reported exerting much more effort on the job. They also reported higher rates of badmouthing the person who caused the pressure.
The findings demonstrate that extreme work habits influence the broader social environment of an office. However, the researchers note that their studies focused heavily on the immediate reactions of coworkers. Over a longer time horizon, the dynamics of social comparison might shift.
As problems associated with workaholism, such as burnout, become evident, workaholics’ status as a benchmark for comparison might fade. The research also did not account for differing cultural or industry norms regarding extreme hours. In environments where excessive work is heavily normalized or openly demanded by leadership, coworkers might interpret proself and prosocial motives differently.
Additionally, the studies did not account for the role of individual personality traits. Employees who share high work centrality, meaning they both prioritize their jobs above all else, might develop a mutual understanding. In those cases, a workaholic might inspire collaboration rather than resentment.
The study, “Workaholics Anonymous? Proself Attributions of Workaholism Increase Coworker Work Effort and Badmouthing,” was authored by Jun Gu, Zhuolin She, Quan Li, Anna Carmella G. Ocampo, Rebecca Mitchell, and Long W. Lam.
