Mixing Pleasure with Work: Employee Perceptions of and Responses to Workplace Romance

This study examined organizational members' perceptions of and responses to workplace romance. In this 2 x 4 experimental design, 212 working adults reported their beliefs and communication-related responses to a hypothetical male or female coworker dating an organizational peer, superior, subordinate, or individual unaffiliated with the organization. Employees perceived peers dating superiors to be more driven by job motives, less driven by love motives, and more likely to receive unfair advantages due to their romance than peers dating individuals of other status types. Employees also reported a higher likelihood of engaging in information manipulation with and reported less trust in peers dating superiors than peers with romantic partners of other status types. Finally, job and love motives, perceptions of peers enjoying unfair advantages due to their romance, and peer trust mediated the relationships between the status of the organizational peer's partner and coworkers' self-disclosure and deception with the peer.