Interpersonal Communication- A Mindful Approach to Relationships, 2020a

WRs they had engaged in, this motive was never attributed to those pursuits.” 56
The final part of this section is going to examine the research related to how coworkers view these romantic
workplace relationships. The overwhelming majority of us will never engage in a romantic workplace
relationship, but most (if not all) of us will watch others who do. Sometimes these relationships work out,
but they don’t. Some researchers have examined how coworkers view their peers who are engaging in
romantic workplace relationships.
• Coworkers trust peers less when they were involved in a romantic workplace relationship with a
supervisor than with a different organizational member. 57
• Coworkers reported less honest and accurate self-disclosures to peers when they were involved in
a romantic workplace relationship with a supervisor than with a different organizational member. 58
• “Coworkers perceived a peer dating a superior to be more driven by job motives and less by love
motives than they perceived peer dating individuals of any other status type.” 59
• Coworkers reported that they felt their peers were more likely to get an unfair advantage when
dating their leader rather a coworker at a different level of the hierarchy. 60
• Peers dating subordinates were also felt to get an unfair advantage compared with peers dating
people outside the organization. 61
• Gay or lesbian peers who dated a leader were trusted less, deceived more, and perceived as less
credible than a peer dating a peer. 62
• “Organizational peers are less likely to deceive gay and lesbian peers involved in WRs and to
perceive gay and lesbian peers in WRs as more caring and of higher character than heterosexual
peers who date at work.” 63
• Women who saw higher levels of sexual behavior in the workplace have lower levels of job
satisfaction, but there was no relationship between observing sexual behaviors at work and job
satisfaction for men. 64
• When taking someone’s level of job satisfaction out of the picture, people who saw higher levels of
sexual behavior in the workplace were more likely to look for another job. 65
As you can see, dating in the workplace and open displays of sexuality in the workplace have
some interesting outcomes for both the individuals involved in the relationship, their peers, and the
organization.
Key Takeaways
• According to Charles Pierce, Donn Byrne, and Herman Aguinis, a romantic
workplace relationship occurs when “two employees have acknowledged their
mutual attraction to one another and have physically acted upon their romantic
feelings in the form of a dating or otherwise intimate association.”
• Charles Pierce, Donn Byrne, and Herman Aguinis’ model of romantic workplace
relationships (Seen in Figure 13.6) have six basic stages: propinquity, interpersonal
attraction, romantic attraction, desire for romantic relationship, engagement
481
Interpersonal Communication