9 Topics You Should Never Discuss At Work—Based On Science

Hundreds of behavioral science studies show people rarely understand the true intentions of others. Indeed, miscommunication happens at home, even when our loved ones know us well. At work—where colleagues only see the surfaces of our personalities—misunderstandings are bound to happen.

Unfortunately, even a simple misunderstanding, despite good intentions, could mean trouble for our jobs and careers. Yet, if one adds controversial and contentious topics to the equation, things can become outright dangerous.

For example, behavioral science teaches us that we’re all biased, and our biases are hard-coded and hard-worn. They are hard-coded because our brain's cut corners, use short-cuts and jump to conclusions to save energy. They’re hard-worn because many of our hangups go unchallenged.

The net effect is that what we hear from others gets digested and understood in a distorted way. Yet, there’s something else to note about our brains: this process of cutting corners, jumping to conclusions and distorting reality gets ramped up when our emotions start flaring.

Thus, you might think of pre-existing biases as dried kindle, and emotionally charged topics as a book of matches. All it takes is one wrong comment on a contentious topic to spark a blaze that gets out of control.

Considering all this, our only choice is to check our own behavior so as not to aggravate the hidden biases of others—especially in a professional setting.

Again: these biases are hard-coded, and unless others consciously uproot them, there’s nothing we can do to remove them. What we can do, however, is avoid hot-button, emotionally disruptive topics that do no one any good.

Here then are 9 such topics you should avoid discussing at work—whether in your office, in a remote location or on social media—based on science. These include:

1. The Presidential Election, Party Politics and Religion: This should be a no-brainer (pun intended). For as the old saying goes, “Friends and family should never discuss politics and religion.” At work we should apply the same rule. One reason for doing so is because people take hard positions—particularly on politics and religion. As a result, they will never agree to disagree with you, nor soften their positions based upon the strengths of your argument or even the data. For example, researchers from University College London have found showing one’s political convictions in discourse does little more than solidify the convictions of opponents. In other words, the harder we push, the more others push back, even if the data are on our side. Furthermore, other behavioral research suggests debates—especially debates about politics and religion—lead to our passing judgement on others. But judging gives rise to a devastating, mental weakness: something we behavioral scientists call the bias blind spot. In other words, discussing politics and religion only makes us irrational and increasingly blind to our own irrational thinking. That’s hardly something we’re being paid to allow happen to us at work.
2. Race, Ethnicity and Gender. If political and religious discussions are poor topic choices, then race, ethnicity and gender are even more so—since the latter tend to drive political and religious debates. What’s worse, these taboo topics bring emotional biases into the picture, which further deplete rationality. Of course, as a practical matter, if race, ethnicity or gender are clear problems at your workplace, there’s evidence intervention by professionals to facilitate discussion can help. At the same time, the effectiveness of such interventions depends upon the facilitators’s unbiasedness and professional knowledge of behavioral science methods. If, for example, they come into the facilitated discussion with a ‘normative,’ accusative or even a casual view—one that force-feeds open-mindedness—their approach could do more harm than good. To the contrary, evidence suggests, the best approach to discussing race and gender is professional facilitation based upon unbiased selection of  historical facts and science, not opinions or feel good exercises.
3. Immigration. Inevitably polarization around immigration conjures up job security-related arguments. This leads to stress for anyone who feels their job is threatened and, as we’ve written elsewhere, stress creates a myriad of other problems—including depleted performance. Thus, unless your company deals with immigration (or any of the above topics) as part of its business model—e.g., you process immigration applications—it’s a topic best avoided at work.
4. Protests. Protests around the world have now erupted over voting rights, political discontent, racial and even religious divides. Obviously, all these motivations carry emotional charges. But, as we have said already, emotional topics lead to the potential for emotional biases and that hurts performance. What’s worse, hurt feelings can last a very long time.
5. Sex. Unless you work in a clinic that deals with sexual disorders—or your company sells products and services based upon sexual activity—this is a truly hot-button topic to be avoided. The science shows that men and women almost never understand each other’s sexual intentions in the same way. For example, researchers in Norway have found that men almost always misinterpret a relationship as sexual when women interpret it as friendly. Thus, discussions of sex open the doorway to crossing the line and dropping innuendo. That’s not only a misunderstanding waiting to happen, it’s a surefire way to get fired.
6. Your Medical Problems. People judge us on our physical adequacy, and behavioral research shows, this extends to how they view our competency. Leaders are seen as more ‘leader like’ when they are viewed as strong and physically healthy. Thus, by induction, over-sharing your medical challenges could potentially have colleagues or superiors viewing you as incompetent and unsuitable for promotion. Of course, the caveat here is when you’re a leader with a strong and long track record of successfully guiding the organization or the team through difficulty. In that case, your physical health is not associated with weakness, but with the future of the organization. People are concerned because they rely upon you. Moreover, for that reason, your fiduciary duties may even require you to disclose your health problems. Nonetheless, that’s formal, HR and perhaps board-level stuff—not something to discuss with colleagues over Zoom.
7. Your Financial Problems. Similar to discussing your medical problems, discussing your financial problems reflects poorly on your competency. In a plain vanilla sense, sharing your financial problems with co-workers—who might make the same or similar salaries as you—makes you the prime suspect whenever something of value goes missing or corners on work get cut. Indeed, in one survey of American workers, 52 percent admitted to stealing something from the office—and that’s the number who admitted it. Yet, on a deeper level, discussing your financial problems with colleagues suggests you’re bad at managing money. And that, in turn, suggests a certain degree of incompetence.
8. Co—Workers, the Boss, Superiors, Senior Management. It should go without saying that the office place is no place to (informally) discuss other people. Yet, we say it because people still do it. Of course, if a situation arises that requires evaluating or questioning someone’s performance or behavior, you should insist discussing it formally and in accordance with the company’s policy. Moreover, don’t be curt in stopping the mouths of colleagues who bring up such topics. Rather, try to gently change the subject. And if your colleague fails to get the hint, again gently remind them by saying, “we have a lot of work to do.”
9. How Co-Workers Responded to the Pandemic. Fear is problem these days. And if COVID-19 brought little else, it brought fear to the hearts of millions or perhaps billions of people. Moreover, medical experts at the CDC and elsewhere now say fear and anxiety—which lead to depressive disorders—could represent a more dangerous and longer term epidemic than COVID-19 itself. Understanding this, you must appreciate that everyone experiences and reacts to fear differently. For many, fear creates irrationality. It leads them to either freeze or do erratic things or a combination of both. In most cases, a person in fear does not fully understand or even remember their own behavior—even when it resulted in creating major problems. For all those reasons and more, highlighting strange or panic behavior in the office place, among colleagues or even in your surrounding neighborhood, is a surefire way to increase tension, stress and create problems.

Of course, because the above list of topics reflects what’s typically covered on the landing pages of most news outlets, you might ask: “What then, can I discuss around the water-cooler (or on breaks during my video calls)?”

Lots of things—but especially topics that are not emotionally charged or, if emotional, have common, sympathetic markers. Good discussion topics include, for example:

• Work/ and The Task at Hand. After all, that's what you’re paid to discuss.
• Your animals—unless you manage them in gross ways.
• Topics related to children, but not your own. In general, people don’t like discussions focusing on other people’s children. Yet, topics about school or general effects on children are okay.
• Sports, unrelated to politics, and not with Eagles fans. The latter is self-explanatory to anyone who has ever lived near Philly.
• Science—but not hot-button topics, like global warming, abortion, trans-humanism, etc.
• Music and Art—as long as you don’t draw it back to why you think MoMa now has stupid things that look like finger paintings on display.
• Technology, but not complaining about video-conferencing or the office requirement to use it.
• Food and Clothing—but not always complaining about eating or not eating and not about obese people. Of course, never whip out a beer or some other alcoholic beverage.
• Anything un-emotional.

At the end of the day, few of us are paid to discuss hot-button, taboo topics at work. Yet, most of us should understand the extreme risk of doing so.