The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a trend that has shifted to digital communication technology. With millions of employees asked to work from home, use of video conferencing company Zoom increased 30-fold in April 2020, with more than 300 million daily participants in virtual meetings. at its peak.first
However, virtual workspaces continue to be popular even after the pandemic duties have been lifted. From 2020 to 2021, Zoom saw year-on-year revenue growth of 355%, 367%, and 369% in the second, third, and fourth quarters, respectively.2
“Work is no longer a place. But as it turns out, the best ideas may not happen,” said Eric S. Yuan, founder and chief executive officer of Zoom. Virtualization and an increased reliance on virtual communication may come with cognitive costs.3,4
With virtual communication, creative ideas are affected
Screen communication may not yield the same results as old-fashioned face-to-face communication. The ability to generate ideas in collaboration is “at the heart of scientific and commercial progress,” according to researchers from Columbia and Stanford Universities. They explained:5
“From the Greek symposium to Lennon and McCartney, the collaboration has provided some of the most important ideas in human history.
Until recently, these collaborations mainly required the same physical space because existing communication technologies (such as mail, email, and phone calls) limited the range of information available to people communicate and reduce the synchronization of information exchange (multimedia theory, social presence theory, media synchronization theory). ”
However, there’s something about sharing a physical space that enhances ideas and “something” that’s lost when collaborating across screens, the team found. In a study of 602 people,6 participants were randomly paired to create creative uses for a product over a five-minute period, then chose their most creative idea for another minute. Pairs worked together in person or virtual, the latter using their partner’s video monitor.
Significant differences were noted, including that virtual pairs generated significantly fewer total ideas than direct pairs. In the second part of the experiment, 151 pairs created creative applications for a product either live or virtual, but this time the setting was a room with 10 props, some of them normal, like folder and some unusual, such as a skeleton poster.
This phase of the study involved asking participants to recall props in the room, while the researchers also recorded the participants’ gazes. The idea was to test their hypothesis that “that virtual communication impedes the formation of ideas because the limited virtual space shared by pairs narrows the visual field, thereby narrowing the range of perception.” awake.”
Focusing on the screen hinders idea generation
The results support their hypothesis, showing that virtual couples spend significantly more time focusing on screens to look directly at their partners and significantly less time looking around the room.
As a result, they were able to recall significantly fewer unusual props in their room than live pairs. Furthermore, both recalling the unusual prop and looking around the room were significantly associated with an increase in the number of creative ideas.7
“This combination of analyzes focuses on the notion that virtual communication narrows the visual focus, which then hinders ideation,” according to the study.8 They then went one step further to determine if the results would hold true in a typical workplace, as opposed to a laboratory setting.
For field testing, 1,490 engineers worked in pairs face-to-face or via videoconference to pitch product ideas for an hour, then select one of them to send as an exchange. new products for the company.
Similar to laboratory research, engineers working together generate fewer overall ideas and fewer creative ideas than those working directly together. However, there are some indications that when it comes to selecting an idea, virtual communication can be as much, or perhaps even more effective, than face-to-face collaboration.
Is a hybrid setup the best?
While face-to-face communication can have some advantages for creative ideation, there are other factors that must be taken into account when determining whether to use virtual communication. For example, some people have suggested that virtual communication is better for the environment,9 while 75% of US employees surveyed in 2021 said they prefer to work remotely at least one day a week.ten
“[M]any additional factors that necessarily enter the calculation, such as travel and real estate costs, potential for expanding talent pool, the value of chance encounters, and difficulties in finding manage time zones and regional cultural differences,” the team noted.11 added “there are specific and immediate economic advantages to virtual interaction.”
Therefore, using a combination of face-to-face and virtual communication can be in the best interest of both worlds, especially if, perhaps, creative ideation is a priority in meetings. direct. As it stands, it is estimated that US employees work from home about 20% of the time by 2021.twelfth
Virtual fatigue is real
It must be recognized that virtual communication can be damaging to human health not only due to perceived costs, but also due to increased time people are glued to screens, leading to concerns about sedentary behavior and EMF and blue light exposure, as well as feelings of fatigue.
Virtual meeting fatigue, sometimes referred to as “zoom fatigue,” has been widely talked about during the pandemic, including for students who suddenly find themselves in virtual meetings every day. hours a day. According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, virtual meeting fatigue is described as “the feeling of exhaustion and lack of energy after a day of virtual meetings”.13 The researchers explain:14
“Drawing from the theory related to self-presentation, we propose and test a model in which learning conditioning (camera on versus off) is related to daily fatigue; In contrast, daily fatigue was found to be negatively related to voice and interaction during virtual meetings.
We further predict that gender and organization tenure will moderate this relationship, so using cameras in virtual meetings will be more exhausting for women and newer members of the organization. . ”
In a 4-week study, the team analyzed 1,408 daily observations from 103 employees, finding that their theory was correct and, moreover, that virtual meeting fatigue affected performance at meetings that day as well as the next.15
The impact of virtual meetings on children is also unknown, but it is suggested that they, along with other COVID-19 pandemic measures such as mask wearing and social distancing, could negatively affect communication and language skills in adolescents.16 It’s hard to ignore the possibility that participating in face-to-face meetings can promote team cohesion and achieve better results.
Speaking to The Washington Post, corporate coach Paul Axtell explained, “In-person encounters provide a sense of intimacy, connection, and empathy that is hard to replicate through video. It is much easier to ask for attentive listening and presence, which creates the psychological security that people need to feel in order to participate and participate fully. ”17
On the other hand, virtual meeting fatigue, known as “harmful to employee health and productivity,” can be attributed to a number of factors unique to virtual settings, including:18
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Increased cognitive load due to prolonged viewing from others |
The apparent closeness of others |
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Reduced mobility |
Unmet expectations regarding synchronous and nonverbal signaling |
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Loss of sense of place |
Reduce scaffolding and surveillance |
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Decreased dynamism and unconsciously distributed work among teammates |
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Watching self-recorded videos during virtual meetings is another factor that can lead to “mirror anxiety” and negative self-attention, which is not only psychologically stressful, but can also affect to meeting performance and add fatigue to the virtual meeting.19
In another survey of 322 higher education faculty members, moderate levels of fatigue were reported during virtual meetings.20 Important predictors of virtual meeting fatigue include feeling physically trapped, anxiety in the mirror, time between videoconference sessions, and video conferencing duration.
Virtual communication can confuse you
Another theory as to why virtual meetings might feel so psychologically taxing is suggested by Robby Nadler, director of the Academic, Professional, and Technical Graduate Writing Development Program. of UC Santa Barbara. He describes virtual meeting fatigue as part of a larger computer-mediated communication (CMC) exhaustion that emerges from long-term use of the CMC platform.21
Part of the problem has to do with how your brain processes spatial cues, since virtual communication distorts our typical spatial sense.
“Because a lot of people using platforms like Zoom are trying to replicate physical-spatial interactions,” Nadler said in a University of California news release, “they end up getting exhausted because we try to do their best to create physical interactions, virtual spaces operate according to different rules. ”22 He specifically mentions virtual communication leading to the creation of a “third interface”:23
“[T]a third skin is proposed to explain spatial nuanced differences between SOCs [synchronous online consultations] and direct exchange means that the participants do not participate as human agents but are “flattened” into a whole of third skin that includes people, platforms and technologies .
The transformation results and our body makes significant cognitive efforts to interact with this transformation that is theorized to produce CMC-induced burnout.”
Nadler used the example of a chat in a coffee shop, where the coffee grinder made a noise in the background. All of your in-person parties associate the coffee grinder with typical ambient noise in the bar. However, in a virtual setting, the coffee grinder in the background will be an interruption to you.24
“So even though we like to think when we’re in a Zoom meeting that we’re engaging with another person and all the rules of physical interaction stay the same,” explains Nadler, “these what we’re really doing is attracting a particular representative that has all these spatial differences to this terrifying extent – and that’s where CMC burnout can happen because their minds We want to do something that reality doesn’t allow. “25
Finally, it’s likely that virtual meetings are here to stay, providing both benefits and drawbacks to how people interact and communicate on a daily basis, at work, at school, and in personal lives. their.
On an individual level, balance is key. For every hour that you spend in virtual communication, make sure you can offset it with meaningful face-to-face communication and plenty of daily physical and movement activities, preferably in a natural setting. outdoor, of course.
