That extra effort requires more mental bandwidth.Īcross a series of tests, Woolley and her colleagues found that people rely more on audio cues than visual ones to move a conversation forward. We need intense focus to absorb information and process facial expressions, tone, and body language.

Video chat is harder for our brains to process than face-to-face communication. But studies have found that both become diminished over Zoom. Having both audio and visual cues seems like it would be the next best thing to in-person interactions. Our study underscores the importance of audio cues, which appear to be compromised by video access.” “This is because it leads to more unequal contribution to conversation and disrupts vocal synchrony.

“We found that video conferencing can actually reduce collective intelligence,” says Anita Williams Woolley of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. Phone calls, on the other hand, are far superior both for conveying emotion and boosting group performance. Plus, the temptation to check your phone or answer emails on the side is often too great to resist. Many of us have experienced Zoom meetings where people are interrupting or talking over each other. But staring at faces in boxes all day didn’t turn out to be the panacea we had hoped.īesides causing well-documented Zoom fatigue, researchers now say that video calls aren’t even that effective for communication. When the pandemic began, businesses, schools, and everyone between rushed to embrace video conferencing tools. Want to know what is the most underappreciated technology of the last year-plus? The humble telephone.

Zoom phone calls