America’s Political Stress Doesn’t Stop At The Office Door, Study Finds

Bad Political News Follows Workers Into the Office, Study Finds

Weeks when people consumed more negative political news than usual were associated with higher anxiety and lower engagement at work, according to a new study. Weeks with more positive political news showed the opposite pattern, with greater hope, more helping behavior toward coworkers, and stronger engagement on the job.

Published in Computers in Human Behavior, the study followed 308 American workers for nine weeks during the 2024 U.S. presidential primaries, checking in each week on their political news habits and how they felt and behaved at work. Apparently, election coverage doesn’t stay contained to a lunch break or a phone screen.

Souring people’s moods is only part of what’s going on here. Political stress outside work hours follows people into meetings, into conversations with colleagues, and into how much effort they put into their jobs. Researchers from Texas A&M University, the University of Central Florida, Bowling Green State University, Rice University, and Baruch College led the work, building on a psychological framework called conservation of resources theory, which holds that people are constantly trying to protect and rebuild personal resources like emotional energy and focus. When those resources take a hit, work is often where it shows.

308 Workers Tracked Their Political News Habits for Nine Weeks

Researchers recruited participants through Prolific, an online platform used for survey research, and required everyone to be full-time workers in the U.S. who interact with coworkers regularly. Surveys ran each weekend from January 19 through March 15, 2024, covering the period from the Iowa caucuses through the week after Super Tuesday, when Donald Trump secured enough delegates to become the presumptive Republican nominee.

More than 800 people completed the first survey, but participation dropped off over time. By the end, 308 employees had completed all nine weekly surveys and passed data quality checks. Those who stuck around were mostly white (71.7%), male (59.7%), averaged 43 years old, and worked about 41 hours a week. A slight majority leaned politically left of center. Younger workers, women, and Black or African American participants were more likely to drop out before the study ended, a gap researchers flagged as a limitation for future work.

Each week, participants reported how often they consumed political news they personally saw as negative or positive, across TV, social media, podcasts, and newspapers. They also reported their anxiety and hope levels, how much they held back their opinions or filtered their speech at work, how often they helped coworkers, and how engaged they felt on the job.

Negative Political News Spikes Tied to Anxiety, Not Lasting Stress

Negative political news and anxiety moved together, but only within a person’s own routine. Someone who generally consumed more negative news than their coworkers wasn’t necessarily more anxious overall. The effect only showed up in personal week-to-week swings, meaning the pattern may be driven more by increases in a person’s own negative news habits from one week to the next than by how much negative news they consume overall.

Positive political news told a different story, and a longer-lasting one. Unlike the negative-news effect, hope from positive political news held up both week to week and when comparing people to each other over the full nine weeks. Workers who generally consumed more positive political news than their peers reported consistently higher hope, more helping, and stronger engagement.

One unexpected finding: negative and positive political news consumption rose and fell together. People who consumed more of one type tended to consume more of the other, too. And despite the assumption that bad news dominates the media, consumption levels of negative and positive political content didn’t differ much across the nine weeks, and both actually declined somewhat as the primary season wore on.

Researchers Stop Short of Telling Employees What News to Consume

Study authors stopped short of suggesting companies police what employees watch or read. As the paper puts it, “we do not recommend that employers tell their employees what kinds of political information to consume.” Instead, they pointed to steps organizations might take to ease political anxiety, such as offering time off to vote, encouraging volunteering, creating space for open conversation, or providing mental health resources during high-stress political periods like elections.

People tend to associate political stress with group chats and dinner table arguments, but the findings show it follows them into the office too, changing how anxious or hopeful they feel, how engaged they are in their work, and, in the case of positive news, how willing they are to help coworkers. Nobody needs to quit reading the news. But the emotional weight of that habit doesn’t clock out when the workday starts.

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Disclaimer: This article summarizes findings from a peer-reviewed study and is intended for general informational purposes. It is not medical, mental health, or workplace policy advice. The study was correlational, meaning it can show that news consumption, anxiety, hope, and work behaviors moved together, but it cannot prove that one caused another.

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