A week at the on-site shelter last year, Jeremy Bailenson was talking to a BBC reporter and had an epiphany.
“Why are we expanding? There is no need to use Zoom ”, he thought. One phone call would have been enough.
This core of achievement became an opinion piece that Bailenson wrote in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Why Zoom Meetings Can Exhaust Us.”
Bailenson, professor of communications and founder of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, wanted to go deeper.
He then wrote an academic article, published Tuesday in Technology, Mind, and Behavior, which summarizes four underlying causes of videoconferencing fatigue.
First, the shape subjects us to prolonged close eye contact.
In the vicinity of an elevator, Bailenson points out in his newspaper, people avoid making eye contact.
During face-to-face meetings, they can look at the speaker, but they are also looking down to take notes or look elsewhere.
“At Zoom, you get eye contact 100% of the time, regardless of whether or not you are speaking,” Bailenson said in an interview.
Our computer screens increase the intensity.
When viewing the speaker on a laptop screen, a person’s face appears to be about 12 inches long, Bailenson said.
This is the real-world equivalent of someone standing just over five feet away from you.
According to Edward T. Hall’s proxemic theory, anything closer than 2 feet looks like an invasion into the intimate space that is usually reserved for family and close friends, Bailenson said.
“Still, on work calls,” he said, “we are actually in each other’s intimate space for hours and hours a day.”
The second problem is cognitive overload.
When talking about Zoom, notes Bailenson, not only do we issue more tips, for example, shaking our heads emphatically or giving a thumbs up, but we also receive tips that we don’t always have the context to process.
For example, what looks like a sideways eye may just be someone looking at an email notification.
In one of Bailenson’s experiments, the researchers used virtual reality to make the two students in the study feel that they were receiving unwavering and total eye contact from their teacher 100% of the time.
The students paid more attention, but it came at a cost, said Bailenson.
Even though the look in that study was “socially false” in the same way that people aren’t really looking directly at you through Zoom, it looked “perceptibly real,” said Bailenson. “And that leaves us exhausted.”
Third, Zoom forces us to look at ourselves.
Here, Bailenson cites research that shows that people are more likely to assess themselves when they see their reflection, which can be stressful.
Finally, Zoom limits our mobility in ways that can be stifling.
Some research shows that children retain more than they have learned in mathematics when they are forced to gesture with their hands. And people who walk and talk have more creative ideas than those who stand still.
“There is a good amount of literature that says that movement causes better cognitive function,” said Bailenson.
Our interactions at Zoom opened up new avenues of research for Bailenson, including how we are viewed based on our location in the Zoom grid and whether we are happier when our meetings are grouped or spread out.
Collaborating with other researchers, Bailenson created a 15-point scale to measure how much general, physical, social, emotional and motivational fatigue people experience from videoconferencing.
Bailenson, however, is quick to add that it is not anti-zoom.
It was an important communication tool during the pandemic, he said, and may be more tolerable with some adjustments.
To begin, Bailenson recommends hiding the “auto view” function in Zoom. He also suggests minimizing the Zoom window so that it is big enough to see social signals, but not so big that it looks like you are being watched.
Another tip: adjust the zoom setting so that it looks good, either by adjusting the lighting around the camera or using an external webcam or keyboard that allows you to feel further away.
Finally, Bailenson recommends making phone or audio calls when possible.
“Since we talked, I have sat in three different chairs,” said Bailenson during the interview, which took place over the phone. “At Zoom, you’re sitting there.”