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Does every meeting have to be a Zoom call? Americans are celebrating the first anniversary of home orders and remote working with growing sense of pandemic fatigue. And a new study finds that looking at the faces of your colleagues, up close and personal, and your own, probably triggers your “fight or flight” survival reflex.
“The brain pays particular attention to faces, and when we see large faces, we interpret them as close. Our ‘fight or flight’ reflex responds, ”Jeremy Bailenson, director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, told Business Insider. He added, “From an evolutionary standpoint, if there was a very large human face near you, and it was looking you straight in the eye, you were probably going to engage in conflict or mating. Work meeting.”
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It doesn’t, but the number of users of Zoom and other video conferencing platforms has grown from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands over the past year. And despite being physically distant, users make prolonged eye contact across the screen at close range for longer periods of time than ever before. At the same time, non-verbal cues are distorted (does your boss make a face at what you just said or a family member just out of view of the camera?) And physical movement is limited.
It’s not just staring at other people’s faces in a box all day that tires you out of video conferencing, but also watching your own. Seeing your image reflected in the camera can be stressful, research shows, leading to consciously and unconsciously self-criticism and negative mental health consequences.
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Even as Americans gradually return to the workforce over the coming year, “video conferencing is here to stay,” Bailenson concludes. Like many other pandemic phenomena, Zoom and its counterparts are likely to be part of the new normal.
“Even when face-to-face meetings become safe again, it’s likely that the culture has finally evolved enough to remove some of the earlier stigma against virtual meetings,” he wrote. “With slight changes to the interface, Zoom has the potential to continue to boost productivity and reduce carbon emissions by replacing commuting. “
Because of this, Bailenson says that while he doesn’t choose Zoom to “vilify” the company, there are both smaller and bigger changes that could improve the experience. New technologies, such as virtual reality, could also provide better solutions to the limits of virtual interactions.
Until then, the next time you schedule a meeting, ask yourself if that meeting could be a phone call? Or better yet – an email?
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