(ORDO NEWS) — Among modern people, there are many who believe in the theory of a worldwide conspiracy, but among those who face bullying at work, there were statistically more of them.
Psychologists suggest that this is due to a sense of paranoia: feeling insecure towards colleagues, a person is more likely to expect meanness from the rest of the world.
Many people believe in conspiracy theories that explain important events as the result of a conspiracy by powerful individuals, from Freemasons and aliens to company executives.
At the same time, the more often a person encounters negativity in life – for example, the rudeness of household members or the coldness of public service workers – the more often he believes that he has become a victim of a conspiracy.
Unfortunately, this is just one of the negative consequences of bullying, which develops a sense of helplessness in victims.
The conspiracy theory, as it were, relieves a person of the blame for his own incapacity: “It’s not me who is a weakling and a loser, it’s all a conspiracy!”
To uncover the link between bullying at work and belief in conspiracy theories, researchers from the UK and France conducted two experiments. In the first, they surveyed 273 people to find out if they were bullied by colleagues and if they believe their failures are the result of someone else’s conspiracy.
It turned out that people working in a negatively-minded team not only more often believed that they were victims of malicious intent, but also suffered more from paranoia. And this pushed them even more to conspiracy beliefs.
In the second experiment, the researchers asked 206 people to imagine themselves in a new workplace in two alternative situations – either as a victim of bullying or working in a positive team.
Participants then completed a questionnaire to determine their level of paranoia and to establish belief in the conspiracy theory.
And again, it turned out that people who presented themselves as victims of bullying were more likely to believe that their boss or senior colleague took up arms against them, who organized the systematic persecution.
While such beliefs may seem harmless to one individual, in fact, in times of isolation (such as during the Covid-19 pandemic ), they can become an obsession, which can lead, for example, to a refusal to vaccinate.
Researchers believe that in order to prevent the growth of such sentiments in society, more attention should be paid to psychological comfort in work teams, because without regular “feeding” from mocking colleagues, it is easier for a person to understand that it is not Freemasons, aliens and evil bosses, but he himself is responsible for their problems.
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