Should every meeting be a Zoom call? Americans celebrate the one-year anniversary of stay-at-home orders and work remotely with a growing sense of pandemic fatigue. And a new study find that staring at your co-workers’ faces, up close and personal, and your own is likely to cause your “fight or flight” survival reflex.
“The brain is particularly alert to faces, and when we see large, we interpret it as close. Our ‘fight or flight’ reflex responds,” said Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab. told Business Insider. He added, “If there was a very large human face near you and it was staring into your eyes, you would probably get involved in conflict or mating. No answers fit well for a work meeting.”
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It is not, but the number of users on Zoom and other video conferencing platforms has skyrocketed from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands over the past year. And although they are physically far away, users make longer eye contact through the screen for a longer time than ever before. At the same time, non-verbal cues are distorted (does your boss make up a face you just said, or is a family member just out of camera view?) And physical movements are restricted.
It’s not just staring at other people’s faces in a box all day making you tired of video conferencing, but also staring at your own. Seeing your image reflected in the camera can be stressful, according to research, which consciously and unconsciously leads to self-criticism and negative consequences for mental health.
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Even as Americans gradually return to the workplace in the coming year, “video conferencing is here to stay,” Bailenson concludes. Like many other pandemic phenomena, Zoom and its peers are likely to become part of the new normal.
“Even when face-to-face meetings will be safe again, it’s likely that culture has finally changed enough to remove some of the previously held stigmas against virtual meetings,” Zoom said. potential to continue to drive productivity and reduce carbon emissions by replacing the shuttle. ”
For this reason, Bailenson says that while he does not single out Zoom “blaspheming the company, there are smaller and larger changes that can enhance the experience. New technologies, such as virtual reality, can also provide better solutions to the limitations of virtual interactions. .
Until then, can you be a phone call the next time you plan a meeting? Or better yet – an email address?
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