Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association.

I'm your host, Caitlin Luna.

From automation to artificial intelligence to employee surveillance, technology is rapidly changing the way we work. It's raising ethical

questions, concerns about the future of the job market, and blurring the lines between

the personal and professional. What does the future of work look like? Our guest for this

episode is Dr. Tara Barron, Associate Professor of Industrial Organizational Psychology and Director of the Workplaces

and Virtual Environments Lab at the George Washington University. Dr. Barron is also on the

Steering Committee for APA's Technology, Mind, and Society Conference planned for this fall. Welcome, Dr.

Barron. Thank you. I'm happy to be here. That's great to have you on our show. Many people

may not know what their employers are tracking about them.

What are some of the typical methods of electronic surveillance?

Sure.

Well, you raised an interesting question because one of the challenges about electronic

surveillance is that you might not know what's being tracked about you.

And I'm certainly not suggesting that everything about your behavior is being tracked, but certainly the technological potential is there.

So this could be something as straightforward as reading your emails or using biometric sensors to tell where you are in the building and who you're talking to.

Or we could imagine even more invasive technologies like tracking your facial expressions or your tone of voice

to determine your emotional state and maybe even intervening if it sounds like you are getting frustrated.

So what are some of the reasons why employers track all this information? I mean, I understand

there are some obvious reasons, but reading email seems very like a time, much really time-consuming thing to do.

Sure.

Well, we can think of useful and beneficial reasons to monitor people or potentially

...