A new study published in Social Psychology investigated if there was a relationship between workplace bullying and belief in conspiracy theories. In a two-part study, one part correlational and one part experimental, the findings indicate that when someone is a victim of workplace bullying, they become more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This research provides new clues into how people begin to believe in conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy theories are not new to the human experience, but in modern times the capacity to disseminate false information supporting conspiracy theories is both new and detrimental. The authors of the study, Daniel Jolley and Anthony Lantian, point out that today’s conspiracy theories may change how people respond in a pandemic, vote, support climate-friendly policies, and even make someone more likely to be violent.
The study authors hoped to add to what is known about how people become vulnerable to conspiracy theories. Earlier research had found connections between bullying and belief in conspiracy theories. Jolley and Lantain looked to explore workplace bullying and its consequences.
“Conspiracy beliefs can impact the smooth running of societies,” said Jolley, an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Nottingham. “Thus, it is paramount to understand the root causes that cause conspiracy beliefs, which can then help inspire ways to tackle them. Motivated by the work linking collective victimhood and conspiracy theorizing, we focused on a specific type of victimhood: workplace bullying.”
“Unlike collective victimhood, bullying is interpersonal, where there is a clear imbalance between the bully and the victim (such as a co-worker being bullied by a superior). This offered a novel opportunity to explore how experiences of workplace bullying may be linked with conspiracy beliefs.”
For their research, Jolley and Lantain recruited 273 participants from an online crowdsourcing platform. All participants lived in the United Kingdom. After providing informed consent, the participants filled out two measures of bullying at work. One was called the Short Negative Acts Questionnaire and the second consisted of a list of questions about workplace bullying experiences in the last six months. Finally, the participants completed measures of paranoia, anxiety, hypervigilance, and conspiracy theories.
Analyzing the data, it became clear there was a relationship between experiencing workplace bullying and having higher scores on measures of conspiracy beliefs. Furthermore, it became clear it was paranoia that was associated with both of the variables in question. “Specifically, bullying experiences were associated with increased paranoia, which in turn, were associated with a higher endorsement of conspiracy beliefs,” stated Jolley and Lantain.
“Our work showcases how conspiracy beliefs can form because of circumstances we all could fall prey to, such as being bullied,” Jolley told PsyPost. “When a hostile environment primes us to search for meaning, we may find a conspiracy explanation particularly appealing. Bullying is an occurrence that we have all likely observed or been the victim of ourselves. This new work uncovered an unexpected consequence of such experiences, the development of conspiracy beliefs.”
The research team used the same crowdsourcing platform to obtain a second sample of 200 U.K.-based participants. The subjects were divided into control and experimental groups. Both groups were asked to imagine they had begun a new job in the last six months and write down as many related details. The experimental group was then asked to imagine additional details that included bullying behaviors from coworkers.
The subjects were provided with this scenario: “I would like you to take a minute to imagine that you have in the past 6-months joined a new workplace. During that time, however, you have been harassed and offended by someone which is negatively affecting your work tasks. There has been the withholding of information, the spread of gossip and rumor, insulting remarks about you, repeated reminders of any errors and persistent unwarranted criticism of your work and effort. These behaviors and others (such as that person shouting at you and conducting unwelcome practical jokes on you) have occurred repeatedly and regularly.”
After this, both groups completed assessments of paranoia and conspiracy theories. The researchers found that those exposed to the imagined bullying scenarios had higher scores on the conspiracy beliefs assessment. In this experiment, however, paranoia was not related to bullying and conspiracy theories.
“Our work used a correlational and experimental design, where we found consistent evidence linking bullying experiences and conspiracy beliefs,” Jolley said. “However, the mechanisms explaining this link were not as clear. We found evidence that (trait) paranoia explained the link between bullying and conspiracy beliefs, but in an experiment, (state) paranoia did not. This suggests that the mechanism could be based on trait-based factors (which our experiment could not activate) or that there is another factor that we have not yet explored.”
The research team acknowledged that study two, in particular, was limited in that its participants only had to imagine a work scenario with bullying rather than experience it. Additionally, study one relied on self-reports, which may be vulnerable to bias.
“We have showcased how bullying could inspire conspiracy beliefs,” Jolley said. “Future research would be wise to understand the mechanisms of why this effect occurs (e.g., is paranoia the stronger factor that explains the effect) and then develop tools to target the development of conspiracy beliefs. That is, exploring whether strategies that have shown to be successful in helping victims of bullying deal with their experience could also help reduce conspiracy beliefs.”
The study, “Bullying and conspiracy theories: Experiences of workplace bullying and the tendency to engage in conspiracy theorizing“, was authored by Daniel Jolley and Anthony Lantain.