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This paper discusses how minor counterproductive workplace behavior (CWB) scripts can be acquired or learned through automated processes from one employee to another.

This research is based on insights from social information processing and automated processing.

This paper helps explain the automated learning of minor CWBs from one’s coworkers.

While some employees purposefully engage in counterproductive workplace behaviors with the intent to harm their organizations, other less overt and minor behaviors are not always carried out with harmful intent, but remain counterproductive, nonetheless. By understanding how the transfer of minor CWBs occurs, employers can strive to set policies and practices in place to help reduce these occurrences.

This paper discusses how negative workplace learning can occur. We hope to contribute to the workplace learning literature by highlighting how and why the spread of minor CWBs occurs amongst coworkers and spur future research focusing on appropriate interventions.

Humor can be a useful tool in the workplace, but it remains unclear whether humor used by men versus women is perceived similarly due to social role expectations. This paper explored whether female humorists have less social latitude in their use of aggressive and affiliative humor in the workplace. This paper also examined how formal organizational status and the target's gender can impact audience perceptions.

Two scenario-based studies were conducted where participants rated the foolishness of the humorist. For Study 1, participants responded to a scenario with an aggressive, humorous comment. For Study 2, participants responded to a scenario with an affiliative, humorous comment.

Results suggested that high-status female humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women were viewed as less foolish than low-status female humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women. Conversely, status did not impact perceptions of male humorists who used aggressive humor with low-status women. Results also indicated that high-status women who used affiliative humor were viewed as less foolish when their humor was directed toward low-status men versus low-status women. Conversely, no differences existed for high-status men who used affiliative humor with low-status men and women.

Narrower social role expectations for women suggest that interpersonal humor can be a riskier strategy for women.

This study suggests that women have less social latitude in their use of humor at work, and that organizational status and target gender influence perceptions of female humorists.