Is a mental trap making work harder than it needs to be? Conspiracies in the workplace, in 3 min
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I have this really bad habit at work. When I get that sixth sense that there are things going on that I don’t know about, I get paranoid. I start to imagine who’s been meeting without me, what they’re planning, what big thing is about to happen that’s going to negatively impact my team. I’m an executive so I am literally one of the people in power, depending on who you ask. Yet I get paranoid, and I can get so wrapped up in it that I’ll miss solutions that are sitting right in front of me if I could just think clearly. And I don’t think I’m alone in this, because I’ve seen other people go down this same weird workplace rabbit hole.
I found a 2023 paper from two researchers in Belgium and Switzerland that really helped me understand this; source below as always. Now I think we all know that conspiracy theory is not a nice or even neutral term, it has very negative connotations. But in this paper, they run through about ten of the major frameworks for what a conspiracy theory is, and they boil it down to one non-judgmental framework that is measurable and based in psychology. And also, it turns out, applicable to me at work.
So here’s the framework. First, conspiracy theories don’t have to explain anything, they don’t have to be about an event, they don’t require specific conspirators, and they don’t even have to be implausible. They can be completely realistic.
All they are is a way of seeing the world you live in that involves some beliefs or assumptions. You assume that widely available information is deceptive and that truthful information is hidden and hard to find. You assume that some group of conspirators exists, whoever they are, and this “them” is creating the information asymmetries on purpose to achieve a secret, self-serving outcome.
Playing this out at work: if we believe that something bigger might be going on that we don’t have access to more information about, and that it might negatively impact us, that’s not a conspiracy theory, that’s a conspiracy belief. And frankly, in any company of sufficient size, at least some of the time that particular conspiracy belief is true and we are right.
Conspiracy theory beliefs (which are a subset of conspiracy belief) depend on us vs them and a questioning of information and reality. In other words, it is a conspiracy theory if we believe that the powers that be are meeting in a room somewhere to intentionally cover up information and/or spread false information for the purpose of their self-serving agenda. And while this too could be true and sometimes is, frankly I have yet to meet a workplace leadership team who is actually this competent and collaborative.
As a side rant, when I’m in a clear-eyed and grounded place, I can tell you with confidence that the harmful outcomes I’ve seen are because a complex system of flawed incentives that are so chaotic and also sort of so stupid that no one person or group could possibly have designed them on purpose even if they wanted to then ends up slowly going off the rails for a long time and finally ends up becoming widely visible, often by accident, at which point people try to come up with a story to explain how something so harmful could have been happening and why this all was the way it was. And I’m not letting people off the hook on this, I’m just saying simple stories are rarely true and “systems fail” is just not a compelling narrative, as it turns out.
But back to conspiracy theories. So conspiracy belief vs conspiracy theory is a subtle distinction but from the perspective of effectively navigating information asymmetry, I think it matters. For me, believing that something is going on that I don’t know stresses me out but can also motivate me to connect with my teams and colleagues and try to find out more. The second it starts to involve a “them”, I can end up in a pretty negative, disempowered place. And I know, from research into psychological health, that this is not an uncommon reaction.
So if you’re out there feeling the creeping paranoia, please know that you’re not alone, and I hope this more specific way to consider what’s happening at work and what you might believe about it has been helpful. Thanks for listening.
Source: https://doi.org/10.1177/09593543231155891 (PDF available via Google Scholar)