With the rise of political conspiracy theories threatening not only the democracy but workplace productivity, psychologists and other experts say employers can take steps now to support their workers’ civic engagement in the run-up to the 2024 general election and equip them to counter false information online.
Conspiracy theories intensified during the mid-term campaigns, endangering candidates and public officials and their families, and some experts fear it will worsen in 2023 and 2024.
Employers, psychologists say, can discourage dissension by refraining from taking partisan stands, providing the workforce with reliable information on polling places and their civic duties, and equipping them to decipher real information about elections from fake news.
Organizations ranging from hospital groups to retail chains are now seeking tools to combat misinformation and disinformation. Misinformation is false information that may be shared by people who believe it to be true; disinformation is deliberately faked information.
“Increasingly, we're seeing companies face challenges when their employees encounter misinformation—particularly during a heated election season,” said Steven Levine, director of the Civic Alliance, a coalition of 1,300 companies, including Amazon, McDonald’s, Starbucks and Wayfair, that are seeking a thriving democracy. “This bad information can often be polarizing, impacting how employees show up to the workplace. As this information spreads, it presents risk to company culture, cohesion, and productivity.”
A 2021 article in the Pepperdine University Graziadio Business Reviewopens in new window (GBR) said conspiracy theories can hurt productivity by causing employees to become angry at one another, withdraw from their colleagues, and reduce the quality of their workopens in new window.
“When people are spouting conspiracy theories on both sides of the aisle, they’re no longer listening and cooperating with each other,” which can spill over into the workplace, said Teri Tompkins, PhD, a professor of applied behavioral sciences at the Graziadio Business School at Pepperdine University and co-author of the GBR “Conspiracies in the Workplace” study.
“I’m worried that when people aren’t able to trust each other and have confidence that the other person is a nice person, then they won’t share information, they’ll doubt what the other person says, which will slow decisions down, they will take sides and have biases,” Tompkins said.
Propaganda and partisan massaging of the facts aren’t new, but social media has paved the way for false information to spread. This is particularly true of what researchers call “moral-emotional” content. In 2017, psychologist Jay Van Bavel, PhD, and his colleagues found that on a variety of political topics, social media messages that included moralizing languageopens in new window spread further than messages with less moralizing language. Examples include words like, “evil,” “greed,” or “shame.”
A 2021 study in the APA journal Technology, Mind, and Behavioropens in new window found that outrage and misinformation were tightly linked on both Facebook and Twitter, with outrage-invoking misinformation leading to more likes, shares, and replies than either outrage-invoking real news or misinformation without a moral-emotional hook.
Social media’s algorithms are designed to keep users plugged into the app, so the things that catch attention get a signal boost not only from users, but from the design of the platform itself. How many times have you been shown an inflammatory tweet, for example, by a user you don’t follow?
You may have even found yourself going down a rabbit hole by clicking on the message, and then another, and another. Emerging science is beginning to shed light on the underlying psychological mechanisms that underlie this behavior. For example, researchopens in new window published in APA’s journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior examined “doomscrolling,” or the tendency to persistently attend to negative information in one’s newsfeed. The research found, among other things, that people who are more politically engaged are also more likely to participate in doomscrolling.
Online trolls are taking advantage of this unfortunate outcome of human psychology and algorithmic design. Some are simply looking to spread fake news for the clicks. Others are hoping to influence elections or destabilize U.S. politics.
An October report by the cybersecurity firm Recorded Futureopens in new window, for example, found that Russian and Chinese troll farms have reactivated fake accounts that aim to push false claims such as widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. According to the report, many of these accounts aim to sow chaos and increase distrust and polarization, pushing extreme views on both the left and right.
Social media platforms have been ill-equipped to combat the misinformation and disinformation spreading on their platforms. For example, an investigation by NewsGuardopens in new window, a company that assesses the transparency and credibility of news sources, found that about 20% of TikTok videos suggested in searches for prominent topics contained misinformationopens in new window. Experts writing in The Conversation also point to the rapid spread of misinformation targeting immigrant communitiesopens in new window. Non-English content easily slips past content moderators at social media companies, which put most of their efforts into English-language moderation.
Beyond the conflicts that could arise if employees bring arguments about false information into the workplace, companies themselves are sometimes the targets of misinformation campaigns.
Dominion Voting Systemsopens in new window, which makes election equipment, was the target of conspiracy theorists who claimed the company had rigged the 2020 presidential election. Online housewares seller Wayfairopens in new window was falsely accused of being a front for child trafficking by the QAnon movement. In 2017, posters on the internet message board 4chan began spreading the rumor that Starbucksopens in new window was offering discounts to undocumented immigrants, forcing the company to issue denials.
What can companies do to prepare for future election cycles? Psychologists and other experts offer several tips to help employers fight the spread of misinformation. They can:
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Get involved. Employers can provide accurate information about elections. According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometeropens in new window, which measures respondents’ trust in various social institutions, 49% of Americans trust businesses, a rate that outpaces people’s trust in media (39%). More important, 74% of Americans trust their own employer, meaning that information coming from one’s employer can be powerful.
- Avoid partisan politics. Getting involved does not mean promoting one political party over another in the workplace. While employers may want to take positions on issues, there is rarely a need for them to promote one political party over another. Doing so could have deleterious effects in the workplace, said Dennis P. Stolle, PhD, senior director of APA’s Office of Applied Psychology.
For example, it could lead to reduced levels of psychological safety among workers who identify with a different political party, which in turn can adversely affect engagement, innovation, productivity, and retention. Employers should work to cultivate a climate in which workers are encouraged to develop their own political opinions based on accurate information while simultaneously being open to the fact that other reasonable people and valuable co-workers may hold different opinions.
- Provide tools. Employers can provide materials on how to decipher truth from fiction.
There are numerous nonpartisan tools employers can make available to staff and customers. In the wake of the pandemic, NewsGuard found itself in demand by the medical industry, said Eric Effron, the company’s editorial director. Medical companies and hospitals have an interest in ensuring their employees don’t get sucked in and spread misinformation, he said.
The News Literacy Projectopens in new window, a nonpartisan nonprofit, supports news literacy education for both youth and adults. RumorGuardopens in new window, the nonprofit’s fact-checking arm, not only confirms or denies viral news stories, it also includes a rundown of the five factors used to determine a claim’s validity: the source, the evidence, the reasoning, the authenticity, and the context.
- Partner with civic organizations. Companies can join the Civic Allianceopens in new window for access to free nonpartisan resources to help develop and grow their employee and/or customer-facing civic communications and programs. Employers can also work with civic organizations such as TurboVoteopens in new window which provides reliable information on how to register, how to vote by mail, and how to find your in-person voting site. They can also support such efforts as the Civics at Work Initiativeopens in new window by the Center for Strategic and International Studies to strengthen civic education among schoolchildren and adults.
People scrolling through social media often make decisions about truth based on their gut, Purdue University cognitive neuroscientist Nadia Brashier, PhD, said in an October webinaropens in new window jointly produced by Civic Alliance and APA. This leaves them open to falling for cognitive pitfalls like the “illusory truth effect,” which means that the brain tends to view repeated information as true. Or they might fall prey to “confirmation bias,” which means being less skeptical of information that already fits one’s worldview.
Experts suggest that employers share the following tips with staff and customers to help them steer clear of false information:
- Slow down. Simply pausing to think is often the first bulwark against inadvertently taking in misinformation. “When people are scrolling through their timelines and newsfeeds, they often aren’t thinking about accuracy, right?” Brashier said. “They’re seeing posts from friends or looking at cute pictures of dogs, so people share content that they could spot as false if they simply thought about it longer.”
- Check your emotions. One of the first red flags for misinformation is your own feelings. Because the spreaders of false information know that emotional and moral words get attention, fake news often triggers strong emotions. If you find yourself outraged at your political enemies, or gleeful that a piece of news proves exactly what you always thought about a specific group, it’s probably time to take a minute.
“If you find yourself having an immediate emotional reaction to something, that is when it is really important to just try to pause and question what it is you’re responding to,” said John Silva, the senior director of education and training at the News Literacy Project. “The sooner you can interrupt that emotional reaction, the more likely you’re going to be able to evaluate that information.”
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Think like an investigative reporter. To effectively evaluate information, you have to know how. First, Silva says, consider who created or shared the information and their motivations. Then go looking for verification from other sources. A strategy called “lateral reading,” which means checking for background information about a source elsewhere, can immediately provide clues about a source’s reliability.
This is where transparent source- and fact-checking tools, such as NewsGuardopens in new window, RumorGuardopens in new window, or Snopesopens in new window, can come in handy.
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Play a game. While people can still handwave away fact-checking that doesn’t match their worldview, psychologists have found that it’s possible to inoculate yourself against misinformation with gamification. The online game Bad Newsopens in new window puts players in the role of a fake-news tycoon, teaching the tricks of the disinformation trade along the way. Research has shown that players become more adept at spotting and resisting misinformationopens in new window after completing the game.
