Deviant Behaviors Scale

1. Abstract

The Deviant Behaviors Scale (DBS), developed by Karl Aquino, Mary U. Lewis, and Marcus Bradfield in 1999, is an influential psychometric instrument designed to quantify counterproductive and norm-violating actions within occupational environments. As organizations increasingly grapple with the systemic and interpersonal fallout of workplace toxicity, the DBS provides organizational psychologists, human resource scholars, and behavioral scientists with a validated, psychometrically grounded operationalization of employee misconduct. The instrument conceptualizes workplace deviance across two distinct behavioral dimensions: Interpersonal Deviance, which captures acts that inflict psychological, emotional, or social harm directly upon individuals within the organization (e.g., colleagues, subordinates, and supervisors), and Organizational Deviance, which reflects behaviors targeting the employing organization’s operational integrity, administrative rules, and tangible property.

Comprising 14 self-report items—6 measuring interpersonal deviance and 8 assessing organizational deviance—the instrument utilizes a 5-point, behavioral-frequency response format ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (more than twenty times) within a specified recall timeframe. In its foundational validation study published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior, the scale exhibited sound internal consistency, yielding Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of .73 for the interpersonal deviance subscale and .76 for the organizational deviance subscale. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the two-factor behavioral model was empirically distinct both from one another and from theoretical antecedents, including distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactional justice. Furthermore, construct validity was substantiated through statistically significant positive correlations with employee negative affectivity and significant negative relationships with organizational justice perceptions. This comprehensive academic article provides an exhaustive psychometric, theoretical, and practical evaluation of the DBS, tracing its foundational underpinnings, empirical performance, and operational utility in organizational research.

2. Keywords

Deviant Behaviors Scale, workplace deviance, interpersonal deviance, organizational deviance, counterproductive work behavior, employee misconduct, organizational justice, negative affectivity, psychometrics, Aquino Lewis Bradfield

3. Authors

The Deviant Behaviors Scale was formulated and validated by a team of organizational behavior scholars led by Dr. Karl Aquino:

• Karl Aquino, Ph.D.: Currently the Richard Poon Professor of Organizations and Diversity at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (and formerly affiliated with the University of Delaware). Dr. Aquino is widely recognized for his extensive empirical research on workplace victimization, social status, moral identity, revenge, counterproductive work behaviors, and organizational justice.
• Mary U. Lewis, Ph.D.: Organizational researcher and behavioral scientist, whose scholarly contributions focus on employee dynamics, workplace attitudes, and interpersonal interactions within complex institutional systems.
• Marcus Bradfield, Ph.D.: Co-investigator and management researcher specializing in organizational justice perceptions, workplace deviance, and statistical methodologies in industrial-organizational psychology.

4. Purpose

Workplace deviance represents a pervasive, economically destructive, and psychologically corrosive phenomenon across modern enterprises. Historically, industrial researchers categorized counterproductive work actions through fragmented lenses—such as absenteeism, employee theft, sabotage, or verbal hostility—treating each as an isolated behavioral pathology. The overarching purpose of the Deviant Behaviors Scale (Aquino, Lewis, & Bradfield, 1999) was to provide an integrative, empirically rigorous measurement system capable of capturing the breadth of voluntary employee actions that violate organizational norms and threaten the well-being of the organization, its constituents, or both.

The scale was developed to address critical theoretical and methodological gaps in the organizational literature. Specifically, the authors aimed to test how employees’ cognitive appraisals of organizational unfairness (spanning distributive, procedural, and interactional justice) interact with individual dispositional vulnerabilities (specifically, negative affectivity) to trigger deviant workplace actions. Prior measures often conflated behaviors directed at specific human beings with behaviors targeting systemic organizational infrastructure. By systematically distinguishing between interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance, the DBS enables researchers to investigate whether employees retaliate against the specific source of their perceived grievance—a concept often termed the target-similarity effect—or whether deviance generalizes across social and operational boundaries.

In applied organizational contexts and empirical research, the DBS serves multiple vital purposes:

• Testing Behavioral Etiology: It enables scholars to dissect the causal pathways leading from workplace mistreatment, abusive supervision, or systemic unfairness to passive-aggressive or overtly destructive employee reactions.
• Evaluating Interventions: Organizations and consultants utilize the scale as an evaluative metric to assess the efficacy of organizational culture transformations, ethics training programs, and conflict resolution systems designed to curb incivility and counterproductive work behavior (CWB).
• Investigating Moderating Variables: The DBS provides a robust dependent variable for testing how personal traits (e.g., self-control, moral identity, emotional stability) and contextual climates (e.g., ethical leadership, psychological safety) attenuate or exacerbate deviance in high-strain environments.
• Diagnostic Benchmarking: In research environments, it offers an anonymous, standardized method for gauging baseline levels of counterproductive behaviors without resorting solely to punitive administrative records, which drastically underreport low-visibility misconduct.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the DBS is Workplace Deviance, defined foundational by Robinson and Bennett (1995) as voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and, in so doing, threatens the well-being of an organization, its members, or both. Rather than conceptualizing deviance as an unguided impulse or random psychopathology, contemporary psychometrics regards it as a purposive behavioral coping strategy, a retributive effort, or an expression of protest against perceived mistreatment. Aquino et al. (1999) operationalized this construct along two distinct behavioral dimensions:

Interpersonal Deviance

Interpersonal deviance encompasses harmful behaviors that directly target colleagues, supervisors, or subordinates within the social fabric of the workplace. These behaviors encompass psychological aggression, social undermining, ostracism, and verbal hostility. The interpersonal subscale in the DBS captures several critical forms of relational mistreatment:

• Verbal and Psychological Hostility: Swearing at a colleague or making obscene comments and gestures represents overt emotional aggression that breaches civil workplace conduct.
• Microaggressions and Identity-Based Slurs: Making ethnic, racial, or religious slurs represents severe discriminatory hostility that poisons the interpersonal climate, degrades minority well-being, and violates institutional antidiscrimination policies.
• Relational Ostracism and Avoidance: Refusing to talk to a co-worker constitutes a passive-aggressive form of social punishment that disrupts team communication, impairs collaboration, and causes psychological distress to the targeted individual.
• Reputational Sabotage and Teasing: Gossiping about a supervisor or publicly teasing a co-worker undermines the victim’s social standing, erodes organizational trust, and creates an environment characterized by pervasive anxiety.

Organizational Deviance

Organizational deviance targets the administrative, structural, and material integrity of the employer. These behaviors are not directed at specific individuals per se, but rather exploit the organization’s resources, time, and command hierarchy. Aquino et al. (1999) divided organizational deviance into production deviance, property deviance, and rule noncompliance:

• Time and Production Theft: Intentionally arriving late for work, leaving work early without permission, taking undeserved breaks, and calling in sick when healthy represent calculated reductions in personal work output, imposing uncompensated costs upon the firm.
• Misuse of Organizational Assets: Making unauthorized use of company property or attending to personal matters during paid work hours diverts organizational resources toward private utility.
• Deception and Fraud: Falsifying the number of hours worked represents deliberate administrative fraud that distorts organizational records and misallocates compensation.
• Structural Insubordination: Purposely ignoring a supervisor’s operational instructions represents a direct challenge to managerial authority and task coordination, threatening enterprise efficiency.

6. Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Deviant Behaviors Scale is situated at the intersection of several prominent psychological and sociological paradigms, primarily Social Exchange Theory, Organizational Justice Theory, and the Frustration-Aggression Hypothesis.

Social Exchange Theory and the Norm of Negative Reciprocity

Pioneered by sociologists such as George Homans (1958) and Peter Blau (1964), social exchange theory posits that organizational relationships are governed by expectations of mutual reciprocity. When an employer provides fair compensation, dignified treatment, and transparent governance, employees reciprocate with positive performance and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). Conversely, drawing on Gouldner’s (1960) norm of negative reciprocity, when an organization or its agents are perceived to have breached psychological contracts, undercompensated labor, or demeaned an employee’s dignity, individuals feel psychologically justified in balancing the social ledger. In this framework, deviant behaviors function as compensatory retributive mechanisms designed to restore psychological equity or inflict costs upon an unfair partner.

Organizational Justice Framework

Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield (1999) framed their empirical inquiry around the three classical justice dimensions:

• Distributive Justice: Grounded in Adams’ (1965) equity theory, distributive justice refers to the perceived fairness of outcome distributions (e.g., pay, promotions, workload). When individuals experience outcome unfavourability relative to their input-outcome ratio, feelings of resentment arise, frequently prompting organizational deviance (such as time theft or unauthorized resource use) as an attempt to re-equilibrate the perceived economic deficit.
• Procedural Justice: Formulated by Thibaut and Walker (1975) and expanded by Leventhal (1980), procedural justice concerns the fairness of the processes and rules used to make allocation decisions. Employees who perceive decision-making processes as biased, opaque, or devoid of voice often direct their frustration toward the systemic organization itself.
• Interactional / Interactive Justice: Articulated by Bies and Moag (1986), interactional justice concerns the interpersonal sensitivity, respect, and informational transparency with which authority figures treat subordinates. When supervisors treat employees with disrespect, contempt, or deceit, employees are theoretically predicted to direct retaliatory deviance specifically toward interpersonal targets (e.g., gossiping about the supervisor, displaying overt hostility).

Dispositional Negative Affectivity and Cognitive Appraisals

The scale’s theoretical model also incorporates Watson and Clark’s (1984) conceptualization of Negative Affectivity (NA). NA is a stable mood disposition reflecting an individual’s propensity to experience aversive emotional states, including anxiety, anger, hostility, and dissatisfaction across time and situations. Aquino et al. theorized that individuals high in NA possess cognitive schemas that heighten their sensitivity to interpersonal slights and systemic unfairness, lowering their threshold for engaging in aggressive or retaliatory deviant responses.

7. Validity

The construct validity of the Deviant Behaviors Scale has been substantiated through rigorous psychometric testing across multiple empirical studies, establishing robust evidence for convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Construct and Factorial Validity

In the foundational investigation conducted by Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield (1999) involving a sample of organizational employees, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) evaluated whether interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance represented distinct constructs rather than a unitary deviance dimension. The empirical results demonstrated that a two-factor model provided a significantly superior fit to the observed covariance matrix compared to a single-factor omnibus model. Furthermore, CFA models verified that the two deviance dimensions were empirically distinct from the justice constructs (distributive, procedural, and interactive justice), demonstrating that perceived unfairness and deviant behaviors do not represent common method artifacts or overlapping conceptual spaces.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The scale demonstrates clear convergent validity with theoretical antecedents. Interpersonal deviance and organizational deviance correlated positively with one another (r = .40 to .50 across varying validation samples), indicating that while they share conceptual commonalities as rule-breaking phenomena, they preserve substantial unique variance. Both dimensions correlated positively and significantly with employee negative affectivity, confirming the theoretical premise that chronic emotional reactivity and dispositional distress predispose individuals to counterproductive work outputs.

Discriminant validity was established through differential correlation patterns with distinct justice dimensions:

• Interpersonal Deviance: Correlated negatively with distributive justice, procedural justice, and interactive justice. As theoretically anticipated, its strongest inverse association was with interactive justice, affirming that interpersonal mistreatment and lack of interpersonal dignity from authority figures are the most salient predictors of interpersonal hostility and coworker undermining.
• Organizational Deviance: Correlated negatively with interactive justice and procedural justice. Its links to organizational-level procedures support the target-similarity hypothesis, showing that systemic procedural grievances manifest in organizational-directed sabotage and time withholding.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

Extensive subsequent literature (e.g., Bennett & Robinson, 2000; Spector et al., 2006) utilizing the DBS or its constituent items has demonstrated strong predictive relationships with organizational turnover, supervisory ratings of low job performance, workplace incivility, burnout, and emotional exhaustion. Furthermore, studies employing objective performance indicators have demonstrated that elevated organizational deviance scores on the DBS reliably correlate with objective records of absenteeism, disciplinary infractions, and shrinkage.

8. Reliability

The internal consistency and measurement reliability of the Deviant Behaviors Scale have been evaluated across numerous occupational samples, demonstrating acceptable psychometric stability for behavioral research.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In the seminal publication by Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield (1999), the internal consistency reliability was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha:

• Interpersonal Deviance Subscale (6 items): Yielded a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .73.
• Organizational Deviance Subscale (8 items): Yielded a Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .76.

According to established psychometric conventions (e.g., Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994; George & Mallery, 2003), coefficient alpha values between .70 and .80 are deemed fully acceptable for basic research, social science surveys, and multidimensional attitudinal scales, especially given the low base-rate and sensitive nature of workplace misconduct. The inter-item correlations within each subscale reflect coherent behavioral domains without displaying the excessive redundancy (alpha > .90) that often signals unnecessarily narrow or repetitive item phrasing.

Cross-Sample Reliability Replications

Subsequent investigations applying the DBS across diverse industrial sectors—including healthcare professionals, public sector administrators, manufacturing personnel, and retail staff—have consistently corroborated the reliability of the subscales, reporting Cronbach’s alphas typically spanning from .72 to .84 for interpersonal deviance and .75 to .87 for organizational deviance. Composite reliability (CR) indices calculated within structural equation modeling (SEM) frameworks have repeatedly satisfied the recommended .70 benchmark, confirming that the measurement error remains within tolerable boundaries.

9. Factor Analysis

The structural integrity of the Deviant Behaviors Scale was thoroughly scrutinized by Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield (1999) using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) to determine whether workplace deviance is best modeled as a global unidimensional construct or as a multidimensional behavioral structure.

Competing Model Evaluations

Aquino et al. evaluated several structural alternatives using maximum likelihood estimation:

• Model 1 (Single-Factor Model): All 14 deviant behavior items loaded onto a single general deviance latent factor. This model exhibited poor fit indices, failing to account for the systematic covariance between targets (individuals vs. organization).
• Model 2 (Two-Factor Correlated Model): Items loaded specifically onto their hypothesized latent factors—6 items on Interpersonal Deviance and 8 items on Organizational Deviance—with the two latent factors allowed to correlate. This model provided an acceptable and significantly superior fit to the empirical data (demonstrated by significant reductions in Chi-square relative to degrees of freedom).

Full Measurement Model Fit with Justice Constructs

To establish that the DBS does not simply mirror employee dissatisfaction or injustice appraisals, Aquino et al. specified a comprehensive 5-factor measurement model including: (1) Interpersonal Deviance, (2) Organizational Deviance, (3) Distributive Justice, (4) Procedural Justice, and (5) Interactive Justice. The fit indices supported the five-factor solution, with standard fit metrics indicating adequate model fit (CFI > .90, RMSEA < .08), demonstrating distinct discriminant boundaries between behavioral manifestations and perceptual cognitive constructs.

Factor Loadings and Parameter Estimates

Standardized factor loadings across the items revealed robust parameter estimates:

• For the Interpersonal Deviance factor, salient loadings were observed for items assessing direct interpersonal hostility (e.g., swearing at a coworker, teasing) and relational ostracism (refusing to speak to a coworker), with loadings generally exceeding .50.
• For the Organizational Deviance factor, strong loadings were demonstrated by production-withholding behaviors (e.g., arriving late, taking unauthorized breaks, personal matters on company time) and rule violations (unauthorized use of property, ignoring supervisor instructions), with loadings consistently maintaining statistical significance at p < .001.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The complete technical attributes and operational characteristics of the Deviant Behaviors Scale are detailed below:

• Instrument Name: Deviant Behaviors Scale (DBS)
• Target Construct: Counterproductive workplace deviance directed toward individuals and the organization
• Administration Method: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or secure computer-based survey (guaranteed anonymity is vital to minimize social desirability bias)
• Target Population: Adult employees across organizational sectors, functional departments, and managerial tiers
• Completion Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Total Item Count: 14 items
  • Interpersonal Deviance Subscale: 6 items
  • Organizational Deviance Subscale: 8 items
• Authentic Response Scale: Responses are obtained using an authentic 5-point Likert-type frequency scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = One to three times
  • 3 = Four to ten times
  • 4 = Eleven to twenty times
  • 5 = More than twenty times
• Scoring and Computational Procedures:
  • Subscale Scores: Computed by calculating the mean or sum of the items corresponding to each subscale. Higher scores indicate greater behavioral frequency of deviant actions.
  • Interpersonal Deviance Score: Mean or sum of items 1 through 6.
  • Organizational Deviance Score: Mean or sum of items 7 through 14.
  • Composite Deviance: While dimension scores are strongly recommended to preserve structural nuance, researchers investigating global counterproductivity occasionally compute an overall mean across all 14 items.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Deviant Behaviors Scale was formally published in 1999 in the Journal of Organizational Behavior (Vol. 20, Issue 7, pp. 1073–1091). The intellectual content and original compilation are copyrighted by the authors (Karl Aquino, Mary U. Lewis, and Marcus Bradfield) and the publisher, John Wiley & Sons Limited.

• Academic Research Use: Under standard fair-use academic conventions, researchers, doctoral candidates, and university scholars may reproduce and utilize the 14 scale items for non-commercial, educational, and scientific empirical investigations without paying licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is formally cited to Aquino, Lewis, and Bradfield (1999).
• Commercial and Consulting Applications: For-profit organizational audits, corporate consulting interventions, commercial psychometric test batteries, or paid executive assessments must obtain formal permissions and licensing clearances directly through John Wiley & Sons Limited via the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) or the publisher’s RightsLink portal.
• Contact and Inquiries: Researchers seeking clarification regarding scoring, translations, or adaptation protocols may contact Dr. Karl Aquino via the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

12. References

• Adams, J. S. (1965). Inequity in social exchange. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 267–299). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60108-2
• Aquino, K., Lewis, M. U., & Bradfield, M. (1999). Justice constructs, negative affectivity, and employee deviance: A proposed model and empirical test. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 20(7), 1073–1091. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.85.3.349
• Bies, R. J., & Moag, J. S. (1986). Interactional justice: Communication criteria of fairness. In R. J. Lewicki, B. H. Sheppard, & M. H. Bazerman (Eds.), Research on Negotiations in Organizations (Vol. 1, pp. 43–55). JAI Press.
• Blau, P. M. (1964). Exchange and Power in Social Life. John Wiley & Sons.
• Colquitt, J. A. (2001). On the dimensionality of organizational justice: A construct validation of a measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(3), 386–400. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.3.386
• George, D., & Mallery, P. (2003). SPSS for Windows Step by Step: A Simple Guide and Reference, 11.0 Update (4th ed.). Allyn & Bacon.
• Gouldner, A. W. (1960). The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25(2), 161–178. https://doi.org/10.2307/2092623
• Homans, G. C. (1958). Social behavior as exchange. American Journal of Sociology, 63(6), 597–606. https://doi.org/10.1086/222355
• Leventhal, G. S. (1980). What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In K. J. Gergen, M. S. Greenberg, & R. H. Willis (Eds.), Social Exchange: Advances in Theory and Research (pp. 27–55). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3087-5_2
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric Theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Robinson, S. L., & Bennett, R. J. (1995). A typological approach to employee deviance: Developing a taxonomy. Academy of Management Journal, 38(2), 555–572. https://doi.org/10.2307/256693
• Spector, P. E., Fox, S., Penney, L. M., Bruursema, K., Goh, A., & Kessler, S. (2006). The dimensionality of counterproductive work behavior and the prevention of workplace deviance: Development of a comprehensive measure. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 68(3), 446–464. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvb.2005.10.004
• Thibaut, J., & Walker, L. (1975). Procedural Justice: A Psychological Analysis. L. Erlbaum Associates.
• Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1984). Negative affectivity: The disposition to experience aversive emotional states. Psychological Bulletin, 96(3), 465–490. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.96.3.465

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)