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Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

cbc.ca

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Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#31

Post by hamandcheese »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #10

I've noticed that it takes a different effort to communicate digitally than in-person. I can talk to a person in a car as I drive, no problem. But talk (even hands-free) over a phone and it takes a lot more attention. As accident statistics point out. Why is this? I think we're wired to interact in-person. When we try to talk to a person we can't sense directly, we have to build a brain model of them. That takes quit…

For driving-and-talking specifically, I remember reading somewhere that when you need to pause for a second and focus on driving, it’s obvious why to a passenger and they can preemptively stop talking, but not obvious to someone on the phone. The person on the phone has no context and will keep talking in your ear as you try to maneuver through a stressful situation.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#33

Post by enobrev »

leonardteo wrote: post #6

It's funny that the original title for this article on CBC was actually "Zoom chats short circuit a brain function essential for trust: Don Pittis | CBC News" and the article only mentioned Zoom. :) They changed the title and edited I guess after people pointed out that the research itself was not Zoom specific. I'm amazed how Zoom has become synonomous with "video conferencing" when there are so many other viable so…

It's hard to say whether zoom would have seen this sort of traction without this pandemic.

With my own team, it won with one very important feature: the audio processing was better, which meant we didn't have to worry as much about muting or wearing headphones.

We wanted to use slack, but on linux you can't share a single window, and with three screens, that's out. Up until recently we couldn't use them for more than one person, anyway. Google meet was OK, but _required_ headphones. I ended up buying a nice expensive pair of headphones specifically because we were using google meet / hangouts / whatever. Otherwise, it was echoes all around.

With zoom, these things went away. It wasn't 100%, but it was damn near close for us. And this was with a technically savvy team in a software company. When it came to chatting with less savvy friends and family, it was an obvious choice for the same reasons.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#34

Post by tchock23 »

I wonder how much of this is 2D/3D and a feeling of “presence.” Anecdotally, I’ve been playing various games in VR with friends & family and it just feels so much more like I’m there. I’d be interested to see research on building trust in virtual 3D environments vs. 2D video chat.

Also, the email vs. in-person donation research didn’t make sense to me. Of course someone that asks you for a donation in-person will get a higher response. However, the reason would be social pressures, reciprocity and/or conformity rather than anything inherent to physical presence.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#35

Post by enobrev »

KallDrexx wrote: post #28

My bet is a big part of the issue is webcams not being embedded in the screens. It's literally impossible to have eye contact because either you are looking at the webcam and not seeing other people, or you are looking at your screen. Many animals are very good at recognizing direct vs indirect eye contact and so I would assume the same is true for humans too.

I don't think I'll be trying this, but it's a really interesting DIY solution to ensuring eye contact when video conferencing. https://youtu.be/2AecAXinars

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#36

Post by tzs »

> In-person encounters are crucial for establishing trust and building successful teams, according to research

Sources of many counterexamples: EverQuest, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Rift.

In all of these games numerous groups of people who have never interacted with each other in person have formed long term successful trusting teams.

EverQuest in particular in its first several years required a lot of teamwork to reach the highest level content, with each team member having to put in effort equivalent to a full time job. EverQuest had a huge "death penalty" compared to pretty much every MMORPG since, with a death sometimes wiping out days or even weeks of advancement and preparation. It was designed so that you could do very little solo or even in small groups at the high end so you had to rely upon and trust your teammates.

Later MMORPGs toned it down a bit compared to EverQuest [1], but they still all had things that greatly benefited from successful trusting teams, and those teams formed in all of them.

[1] As did EverQuest itself. In fact, EQ today is actually a quite fun and interesting game to play solo. On a free play account you can reasonably get a character up to around level 50 solo, which was the limit in original EQ, and that solo character will be able to do a large fraction of what had been the high end content back in the day. On a paid account, which opens up access to more abilities, you can easily solo into at least the 80s or maybe 90s (115 is the current max level).

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#37

Post by wickerman »

I feel like any other tool, it largely depends on the context in which it's being used. I think that video chats are phenomenal in certain workplaces, or for certain people, and terrible in others. I've been in situations where half the team was offshore and it took a long time to build rapport because it's a lot more difficult to be casual while on calls - you want to get to the point while you're on a meeting, so you never get to chit chat with them the same way you would chit chat with the coworker you have right beside you.

But on the other side, I've also worked with people on the autism spectrum and noticed that interactions became a lot easier through video conference than in person. On my side at least, I tend to get thrown off a lot by out of place mannerisms so it was easier for me to communicate with them.

And as some other people have pointed out, there might be working environments where home working actually helps to avoid/reduce tension/intimidation/toxic relationships etc.

Edit: also worth mentioning that my husband and I met and fell in love after skyping for many years (we lived in different continents) and I'm certainly not the only one...

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#38

Post by polytely »

KallDrexx wrote: post #28

My bet is a big part of the issue is webcams not being embedded in the screens. It's literally impossible to have eye contact because either you are looking at the webcam and not seeing other people, or you are looking at your screen. Many animals are very good at recognizing direct vs indirect eye contact and so I would assume the same is true for humans too.

I think some(?) smartphones adjust your eyes via post processing to create the illusion of eye-contact when taking selfies, I wonder if this is fast enough to also do it with built-in webcams in laptops.

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#39

Post by [deleted] »

kevincox wrote: post #5

I don't think this is a surprise for many people who have been working with people in different offices for a while. I don't have any hard evidence but from my experience you can work with people in other offices for months, often getting the feeling that formality and lack of trust was getting in the way. But then I burn a ton of fossil fuels to fly over and spend a couple of days with them in person and the discuss…

[deleted]

Re: Video chats short-circuit a brain function essential for trust?

#40

Post by dr_zoidberg »

r_c_a_d wrote: post #18
kevincox wrote: post #5

I don't think this is a surprise for many people who have been working with people in different offices for a while. I don't have any hard evidence but from my experience you can work with people in other offices for months, often getting the feeling that formality and lack of trust was getting in the way. But then I burn a ton of fossil fuels to fly over and spend a couple of days with them in person and the discuss…

My experience is that after you have met someone once (for more than a few minutes) then video calls work a lot better than with people you have never met. I guess you develop some degree of trust (and a stronger mental model) during a meeting that persists afterwards.

With one of my best friends we met playing online games and we developed trust between each other by force of voicechat and game-specific trust-based mechanics (remember those Portal 2 game trailers?[0] Well that kind of stuff, but along many different online games).

When we met in person it was like we'd known each other for years because we had known each other for years.

I think the issue here could be related to the dissonance of seeing a face, the brain expecting eye contact, but being totally unable to get it because of technological limitations. Since the brain doesn't have any other "source of trust" for that face (be that the voice, past behavior/experiences, having met that person to being with) it clicks the "do not trust (entirely)" response.

Of course I'm not a psychologist/psychiatrist/neurological MD and I'm talking entirely from my experience.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZMSAzZ76EU

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