Workaholics Anonymous? Proself Attributions of Workaholism Increase Coworker Work Effort and Badmouthing

ABSTRACT

Work is inherently social, and employees routinely compare themselves to coworkers to gauge expectations and performance. As a highly visible workplace behavior, workaholism carries interpersonal meaning for those who observe it, yet research has largely overlooked how coworkers are affected when they perceive a colleague as workaholic. Results from three programmatic studies obtained from four samples, including a multiwave and multisource field study, a vignette experiment, and preregistered causal‐chain recall experiments, show that perceived employee workaholism heightens coworkers' individual performance pressure. This effect is particularly pronounced when coworkers attribute the workaholic's behavior to proself motivations (e.g., pursuing financial rewards or promotion opportunities) rather than prosocial motivations (e.g., helping the organization succeed). Elevated performance pressure, in turn, increases engagement in work effort and badmouthing toward the workaholic employee. Collectively, these findings reposition workaholism as a socially consequential workplace behavior, extending prior research by shifting attention from the workaholic to the coworkers who observe and interpret workaholic behaviors.