Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

e terminated.
Robert Quinn was the first researcher to examine why individuals decide to engage in romantic workplace
relationships. 52 Renee Cowan and Sean Horan have more recently updated the list of motives
Quinn created. 53 Cowan and Horan found that the modern worker engages in romantic workplace relationships
for one of four reasons: ease of opportunity, similarity, time, and the hookup. The first three of
these motives are very similar to other motives one generally sees in interpersonal relationships in general.
Furthermore, these categories are not mutually exclusive categories. Let’s examine these motives in
more detail.
The first reason people engage in romantic workplace relationships; happens
because work fosters an environment where people are close to one another. We interact with a broad
range of people in the workplace, so finding someone that one is romantically attracted to is not that surprising.
This is similar to the idea of propinquity examined by Pierce, Byrne, and Aguinis in their romantic
workplace relationship development model discussed earlier in this chapter. 54
Similarity
The second motive discussed by Cowan and Horan is , or finding that others in the workplace
may have identical personalities, interests, backgrounds, desires, needs, goals, etc. As discussed earlier in
this book, we know that when people perceive others as having the same attitude, background, or demographic
similarities (homophily), we perceive them as more like us and are more likely to enter into
relationships with those people. The longer we get to know those people, the greater that probability that
we may decide to turn this into a special peer relationship or a romantic workplace relationship.
Time
As we discussed at the very beginning of this chapter, we spend a lot of our life at work. In a typical year,
we spend around 92.71 days at work (50-weeks a year % 5 days a week % 8.9 hours per day). You ultimately
spend more with your coworkers than you do with almost any other group of people outside
your immediate family. When you spend this much time with people, we learn about them and develop
a sense of who they are and what they’re like. We also know that time is a strong factor when predicting
sexual attraction. 55
The Hook Up
Speaking of sexual attraction, the final motive people have for engaging in romantic workplace relationships
is called “the hook up” by Cowan and Horan. The purpose of “” is casual sex without
any romantic entanglements. Unlike the other three motives, this one is less about creating a romantic
workplace relationship, and more about achieving mutual sexual satisfaction with one’s coworker. In
Cowan and Horan’s study, they do note, “What we found interesting about this theme was that it was
only attributed to coworker’s WRs [workplace relationships]. Although several participants described
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