The Relationship Between Tattoos and Employee Workplace Deviance

Abstract

While those adorned with tattoos have historically belonged to deviant subpopulations, tattoos today are certainly more widespread. With this mainstreaming of tattoos, the question arises whether the deviant stereotype persists and extends to today’s workplace. To address this issue, the present study examined the relationships between tattoos and organizational and interpersonal workplace deviance with a sample of 518 individuals employed in restaurant settings. Whether or not an employee was merely tattooed was not related to either form of deviance. However, greater tattoo number was associated with greater organizational deviance. In addition, the results suggest that being adorned with “darker” tattoos was related to both types of deviance, although the effect sizes were not large. The significant findings held even after controlling for the employees’ agreeableness and conscientiousness.

Attraction, Social Presence, Sociability, and Booking Intentions: The Moderating Role of Homophily

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Negotiable bodies: employer perceptions of visible body modifications

“…However, more recently, authors such as Kosut (2006Kosut ( , 2014 challenge the widely held opinion of tattoos belonging to sub-cultures, low and middle-classes or underground and deviant individuals by highlighting the relationship between tattoos and mainstream consumer culture, identifying their new status as a trendy consumer item. Tattoos have continued to increase in popularity (Ozanne et al, 2019;Tews & Stafford, 2019). In fact, in 2015, Statista reported that 30% of adults between 25-39 years old in the UK had a tattoo (Statista, 2015), whilst more recently they found that 40% of UK adults have at least one tattoo (Statista, 2018).…”