Chapter 1: What are the benefits of discussing politics at work?
The Last Show with David Cooper, where we utilize nonlinear reverse inverse backward thinking protocols. It sounds like this.
Don't talk politics in the office. Ah, that old sage-like wisdom. But when someone actually studied those awkward water cooler political chats, they found out that they might actually help employees process stress, maybe even feel better at work. So maybe do talk politics in the office.
But before opening your mouth, you're going to want to hear what management professor at Washington State University, Christine Kuhn, has to say. Christine, welcome to the show.
Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
So I've always treated workplace and politics, politics like the third rail. Don't touch it. Don't mention it. You're going to get into a fight with your coworkers. I've made the mistake of fighting with my coworkers about politics early in my career.
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Chapter 2: Why have people traditionally avoided political discussions in the workplace?
I think everyone sort of thinks this. What made you want to study it to see if it actually was true? And if most workplaces, this was a bad topic for discussion?
Well, what we were interested in is... emotional reactions to events. And so in general, when people have an emotional reaction to an event, they want to talk to other people about it. It's a way of managing your emotions. And so at work, if you have a incredibly difficult customer, there's a pretty good chance you are going to talk to a coworker about it.
And so there is a stream of research on work-related events and how people manage their emotions. And what we were interested in is when you have an emotional reaction to an external news event.
And in a very politically polarized society, your co-workers might have very different reactions or perceptions of these events than you, which can lead to conflict and all the things that you were just talking about. But in our research, what we found is that people were fairly selective. And so many people did not talk about news events. They did endorse, I don't talk about politics at work.
But those people who did share their reactions to news stories tended to do so with people who they felt were, you know, not identically in terms of politics, but at least aligned or similar.
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Chapter 3: How can political conversations help manage workplace stress?
And so they did report that discussing those reactions to those news events sort of made them feel less alone, that it helped to vent about it, that it was somehow useful. And so it's not that everybody does or that it's always good, but that when it does happen, that people are selective about it and it does seem to help their emotional well-being.
It does still seem a little counterintuitive for this very polarized political moment we look in, that you would talk about this with your co-workers, perhaps a current event, a politician did this, a country did this, and then feel less stressed walking away from it. Why do you think that is?
Because people need to share, I guess I should say, qualify that as social sharing. of emotional reactions does not always improve your well-being. That if it encourages you to ruminate or just constantly sort of go over in your head how bad things are going, that's probably not helpful.
But there are reasons to believe that just expressing yourself, in some cases, if you feel like it's useful to be informed or to take action, you might learn something that helps you cope. And so a lot of it is probably contingent on the event.
And one thing I find fascinating is that, you know, you're not just randomly blurting out your opinions to someone who's wearing a shirt representing a politician you don't like or a hat. It's finding people at work who are at least somewhat similar to you to share how you feel about events. Is that the key takeaway? Don't just talk politics, talk news with any random coworker.
Find someone who's at least similar seeming to you.
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Chapter 4: What did the research reveal about emotional reactions to news events?
Yes. And again... There are lots of non-work topics that people can use to sort of form bonds with their coworkers. You can talk about your kid's soccer game, any sort of point of commonality. But I think people have become even more aware over time that even something simple as talking about the weather could potentially become politically charged. in the current climate.
I guess I was thinking, how could that be? But then I was thinking, oh, people think certain countries control the weather and this, that, and the other. I'm like, oh no, you're right.
Yeah. Or particularly unusual weather that you might be experiencing and what the potential causes of that might be. And so, I don't know, if you say the word self-censorship, then that sounds sort of negative, but people are cautious. And I know a In one of our studies, there was a participant who said, yeah, I didn't talk about this at work because I'm a relatively new employee.
I just don't know where people stand yet.
Chapter 5: How do coworkers' political beliefs influence workplace discussions?
And so that is something that probably develops over time. People probably also use some cues. And so I think that would be a good step for future research is just how people form those opinions about their coworkers over time.
Now, you looked at folks in the U.S. during the 2020 and 2024, the last two elections in which a president was selected. Those were a pretty emotionally charged period for a lot of people. Yes. Did you notice differences around elections or around events or not?
We chose those time periods because by definition, those would be pretty politically charged. And we could also just ask people, hey, did you talk about the news this week? And so asking people did you talk about the news is a little bit less of a priming effect.
We didn't want to sort of cue people that that's what we're interested in because some people are very sensitive about, no, I'm not a political person or no, I would never talk about political topics at work. But then when we did follow-up questions, well, you said you talked about the news. What did you talk about?
Chapter 6: What factors determine whether employees talk about politics at work?
If it was the Friday after the election, pretty much everybody said, yeah, they talked about the election.
And they weren't necessarily in-depth conversations, but it's clear that people were at least bringing it up and they were much more likely to have done so if in an earlier survey that we had assessed their perceptions of similarity to their coworkers along various demographic lines, such as race or gender education.
as well as political beliefs, that political beliefs, that was what really drove whether they were likely to talk about the election that week, you know, several months later. And then to circle back to your earlier question, we also did a study in early 2024 when elections were not dominating the news at that time period.
And we just asked people, think about all the news that you read or watched or listened to this past week. You know, what story did caused you to have the strongest emotional reaction, either good or bad. And almost everybody named a story that was either explicitly political or politically charged, even in early 2024.
They talked about something about the Israel-Palestine conflict, something about an American politician, something about immigration. And then we asked them, did you talk about this story that you had the strong emotional reaction to at work?
And the majority of people said no, either because I don't talk about politics at work, it was too depressing to talk about, or my coworkers see it differently, I don't want to get reported to HR.
But one-third of our participants in that sample had talked about it to people at work, and they mostly described positive outcomes, that it did make them feel alone, that it made them feel at least a little bit better. There were very few people that actually mentioned a story that had made them happy or excited. They were sort of in the minority.
But those people talking about it at work made them feel even a little bit better.
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Chapter 7: Can the findings about workplace discussions apply to family gatherings?
And that's something that in the literature on emotional regularization, they call capitalization, that just talking about something that you're happy or excited about, sharing that with other people makes you feel even a little bit better.
And that was a very small minority of our participants, but that's also a potential benefit that it's not just minimizing stress, but that it does sort of give you a little bit boost to sort of share that with people that are at least seeing that event has also something positive.
Now, you're an academic, a professor, a researcher. You might not want to answer this question because of the lack of data, but could these findings extend to the dinner table like at Thanksgiving or Christmas? Like should families that are highly polarized talk about these things or perhaps not?
You see those articles in the media, you know, every year over the past decade around Thanksgiving, like how you can manage this at the Thanksgiving table. And yeah, I think I'm just going to say that's beyond my scope.
Well, I appreciate you having this discussion with me anyway, Christine. Thanks for joining me.
All right. Thank you so much.
Christine Kuhn is a management professor at Washington State University.
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