Doomscrolling political news during your downtime predicts reduced engagement at work

Consuming political news outside of work is associated with how employees feel and behave once they clock in. A recent study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior indicates that reading or watching negative political media tends to predict higher anxiety and lower work engagement, whereas consuming positive political content predicts increased hope and helpfulness on the job. These findings suggest that the emotional weight of our daily news diets carries over into the workplace and shapes our professional lives.

Modern political events naturally generate a sense of uncertainty. People often seek to reduce this uncertainty by consuming information through television, social media, podcasts, and newspapers. This media consumption exposes individuals to a wide variety of political content. Negative content often features conflict, divisiveness, or pessimism, and positive content might highlight successful policies or affirming societal progress.

The motivation for this study came directly from the researchers’ own experiences with this relentless news cycle. “In today’s algorithmically driven social media landscape, political news and information (scandals, crises, etc.) feels nearly inescapable regardless of your preference of platform,” said Ian M. Hughes, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Texas A&M University.

“During the early days of Summer in 2023, I was having a conversation with someone in my life about how the constant exposure to such information was emotionally impacting me,” Hughes explained. “It was all I seemed able to think about some days; indeed, even when I would be working, I would find myself dwelling on current political events that I had read about on Twitter (now X), feeling compelled to pull out my phone and browse through just a little more content related to these issues. Surely, I thought, this can’t just be me, and so began this research!”

The emotional reactions generated by these media diets do not simply disappear when people arrive at work. According to the conservation of resources theory, humans are intrinsically motivated to protect their personal resources. These resources include tangible things like time and money, as well as abstract traits like emotional energy, political trust, and a sense of control.

When individuals encounter information that threatens these resources, such as negative political news, they tend to experience stress. To cope with this stress, they often adopt defensive behaviors to preserve what emotional energy they have left. When individuals experience resource gains through positive and affirming news, they tend to feel empowered. This empowerment motivates them to invest their energy into their environments.

To explore this dynamic, the scientists tracked full-time workers in the United States over a nine-week period during the 2024 presidential primary season. The study began on January 19, following the Iowa caucuses, and concluded on March 15, shortly after Super Tuesday. Participants were recruited through the online platform Prolific and were compensated for their time. A total of 308 employees completed surveys between Friday and Sunday of every week, yielding 2,772 individual weekly reports.

The participants averaged about 43 years of age, and the sample was roughly 60 percent male and 72 percent white. Each weekend, participants reported how often they had consumed positive or negative political information during their non-work hours using a five-point scale. They rated their weekly feelings of hope and anxiety using single-item measures.

For their workplace behaviors, participants used five-point scales to rate their work engagement, their likelihood to help colleagues, and their level of political correctness. Political correctness was defined as self-censoring or modifying language at work to avoid marginalizing or offending others. The researchers controlled for participants’ baseline political ideologies to ensure personal political leanings did not skew the results.

The findings indicate that week-to-week changes in media diets are linked to shifts in workplace behavior. During weeks when employees consumed more negative political information than their personal average, they reported higher levels of anxiety. This heightened anxiety predicted lower work engagement, meaning employees felt less energetic and absorbed in their tasks. Increased anxiety also predicted a higher likelihood of self-censoring at work.

Increased consumption of positive political information demonstrated a different pattern. During weeks when workers consumed more positive political media than usual, they reported feeling higher levels of hope. This increased hope predicted greater work engagement and an increased willingness to help coworkers with heavy workloads.

To summarize these effects, Hughes noted that the boundary between private habits and professional life is highly permeable. “People need to be more aware that the things they experience and do during their nonwork time influences their emotions and behavior at work; consuming political information from various media channels is no different,” Hughes told PsyPost.

“We uncovered evidence that consuming political information that you perceive to be either negative (e.g., your preferred candidates/policies losing ground) or positive (e.g., your preferred candidates/policies gaining ground) from your favorite media sources has implications for your emotional experiences, which in turn facilitate negative and positive changes (respectively) in workers’ experiences on the job,” Hughes noted.

Interestingly, the researchers found that participants consumed negative and positive political information at roughly similar rates throughout the nine-week study period. They also analyzed general trends across the entire nine-week period to see if some people chronically experienced these effects. Employees who generally consumed more positive political media than their peers reported higher overall hope, which was linked to higher overall workplace helping and engagement.

The researchers did not find a similar long-term effect for negative media consumption. Employees who routinely consumed high amounts of negative news were not consistently more anxious than their peers. “Personally, I was surprised to see that the consumption of perceived positive political information was a more robust predictor of emotions and work experiences than the consumption of perceived negative political information,” Hughes said.

He pointed out that this contradicts a common psychological assumption. “In social psychology, there is a longstanding concept known as negativity bias, or the idea that people direct more attention toward things that they perceive to be negative than things they perceive to be positive,” Hughes explained. “Negativity bias undergirds many theories around human development and progress; we likely would not have made it very far as a species if we weren’t vigilant to threats, after all!”

This psychological tendency is well known in the journalism industry. “This notion also informs, in part, why media enterprises will use ‘click-baity’ or strongly-worded headlines; they know that it triggers this unconscious bias, and is likely to drive clicks and engagement,” Hughes said. “Despite this, it was perceived positive political information that drove most of the effects in our model, an interesting finding that we’ll no doubt unpack further in future research.”

The correlational nature of this research means that absolute cause and effect cannot be established. It is possible that pre-existing feelings of anxiety or hope drive people to seek out specific types of news, rather than the news generating the emotion. The study also relies entirely on self-reported data, which can introduce personal biases.

Because positive news was linked to better workplace outcomes, readers might mistakenly assume they should create an ideological echo chamber. “It’s possible that some folks may read our paper and walk away with the conclusion that they should only seek out and consume political information that makes them feel good or supports their point of view,” Hughes noted.

“This is a faulty line of thinking,” he added. “Being informed and engaged when it comes to a topic as complex (and polarizing) as politics requires unpacking issues from numerous perspectives, not just the ones that you already agree with.”

Instead of ignoring negative news entirely, individuals can critically evaluate the sources they choose. “Relatedly, we encourage people to try and be cognizant of the motivations behind the political content they consume from media enterprises,” Hughes said. “When consuming political content, ask yourself the question: Is this content primarily trying to inform me OR is it trying to capitalize off my engagement?”

The reliance on participants who completed all nine weeks of the study poses another limitation. The researchers noted that younger workers, women, and Black participants dropped out of the study at higher rates. Because the final data only represents those who stayed for the entire two-month period, the findings might not fully generalize to the broader working population. The survey also used single-item measures to assess hope and anxiety, which captures a narrow view of these complex emotional states.

Hughes views this study as a foundational step. “Lastly and very importantly, this research is but one study in a broader stream of work we are developing; at this point, the findings are more descriptive rather than prescriptive,” he said. “As we uncover more about political information consumption across popular media channels, strategies for maintaining your health and well-being while staying politically informed will become clearer.”

The study, “The work-related consequences of employees’ media-based political information consumption: A nine-wave weekly study during the 2024 U.S. presidential primary season,” was authored by Ian M. Hughes, Nathan A. Bowling, Melissa G. Keith, Rebecca M. Brossoit, and Andrea Bazzoli.