A new study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior shows that working alongside a colleague who consistently logs long hours can push others to raise their own performance, while also prompting them to speak ill of the overachiever in private. The ripple effect appears strongest when observers believe the workaholic is driven by personal ambition rather than a team-wide aim.
Psychologists define workaholism as a compulsive, excessive need to work. For decades, research focused on the toll it takes on the individual—burnout, health problems and disrupted personal life—rather than on how a single workaholic shapes the daily experience of nearby colleagues.
Lead authors Jun Gu of Macquarie University and Zhuolin She of Renmin University of China, along with their colleagues, sought to understand the social impact of extreme working patterns. In a shared office, workers naturally compare their output with peers, a process described by social comparison theory, and a high-performing colleague sets an unusually tough benchmark for others to match.
The researchers proposed that merely witnessing a workaholic would generate performance pressure among bystanders and that the motive behind the long hours would matter, drawing on attribution theory. If a coworker is burning the midnight oil to secure a promotion or a bonus—a proself motive—the behaviour might feel threatening.
Conversely, if the extra effort is aimed at helping the department or organisation succeed—a prosocial motive—the same behaviour might be viewed more favourably. The researchers suggested that when adjustment to a new benchmark feels unsustainable, colleagues may respond with defensive tactics, including denigrating the workaholic to offset the pressure they experience.
To test these ideas, the team conducted three studies across four samples. The first spanned four weeks and involved 316 financial services representatives and 56 supervisors at a bank in China. At the outset, representatives reported their general workplace stress and their tendency to badmouth colleagues to establish a baseline.
In the second week, each representative evaluated a randomly selected coworker, rating the coworker’s level of workaholism and judging whether their underlying motives were proself or prosocial. The third week captured how much performance pressure the observer felt during interactions with that coworker. In the final week, supervisors rated the representatives’ work effort while the representatives reported how often they had badmouthed the focal coworker.
Results showed that observers experienced heightened performance pressure when paired with a workaholic colleague, and this pressure translated into higher supervisor-rated effort and more frequent badmouthing. The strength of this effect depended strongly on how the representative perceived the coworker’s motives; when the workaholic was seen as pursuing personal gain, performance pressure was pronounced, whereas the link weakened when the work was framed as prosocial.
To establish causality beyond the field setting, a second study recruited 228 working adults in the United States to read a hypothetical workplace scenario. Participants imagined working with a colleague named Pat who was described as either extremely workaholic or balanced, with motives described as either pursuing a personal bonus or supporting the company’s collective success.
Following the prompt, participants reported how much performance pressure they would feel, how hard they would work, and how likely they were to badmouth Pat. The findings mirrored the field study: high workaholism increased performance pressure, work effort and badmouthing, but only when Pat’s motives were framed as selfish.
To ensure the results reflected real people rather than fictional characters, the researchers conducted two recall experiments with employed business students. In the first recall study, 372 participants were asked to remember a coworker they had interacted with during the past month and to describe that person along four profiles combining high or low workaholism with personal ambition or team success. After writing, participants rated the pressure they felt when working beside that person; recalling a highly workaholic coworker motivated by self-interest produced elevated pressure.
The final experiment isolated the effect of performance pressure itself. Involving 142 business students, it asked participants to recall a real coworker who had made them feel either very high or very low pressure to perform. Those who recalled a high-pressure colleague reported exerting greater effort and showed a higher tendency to badmouth the coworker who caused the pressure.
The researchers conclude that extreme work habits can shape the broader social climate of an office. They also note limitations: their studies focused on immediate, short-term reactions, and the long-term dynamics of social comparison remain unclear. Cultural or industry norms around hours, as well as individual personality traits, were not accounted for, potentially influencing how motives are interpreted and how colleagues respond.
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.
