A study published in the journal Nature has found that video conferencing affects the creativity of collaborations and that virtual tools are not as effective in generating new ideas as in-person interactions.
In a laboratory study and a field experiment across five countries (in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia), the results showed that videoconferencing inhibits the production of creative ideas. By contrast, when it comes to selecting which idea to pursue, it found no evidence that videoconferencing groups are less effective (and preliminary evidence that they may be more effective) than in-person groups.
Departing from previous theories that focus on how oral and written technologies limit the synchronicity and extent of information exchanged the study found that effects are driven by differences in the physical nature of videoconferencing and in-person interactions. Specifically, using eye-gaze and recall measures, as well as latent semantic analysis, the report demonstrated that videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus. The results suggest that virtual interaction comes with a cognitive cost for creative idea generation.
The report says that even if video interaction could communicate the same information (ie real eye to eye contact), there remains an inherent and overlooked physical difference in communicating through video that is not psychologically benign: in-person teams operate in a fully shared physical space, whereas virtual teams inhabit a virtual space that is bounded by the screen in front of each member.
The data suggest that this physical difference in shared space compels virtual communicators to narrow their visual field by concentrating on the screen and filtering out peripheral visual stimuli that are not visible or relevant to their partner.
YOU CAN FIND THE FULL STUDY HERE
According to previous research that empirically and neurologically links visual and cognitive attention, as virtual communicators narrow their visual scope to the shared environment of a screen, their cognitive focus narrows in turn. This narrowed focus constrains the associative process underlying idea generation, whereby thoughts ‘branch out’ and activate disparate information that is then combined to form new ideas, Yet the narrowed cognitive focus induced by the use of screens in virtual interaction does not hinder all collaborative activities. Specifically, idea generation is typically followed by selecting which idea to pursue, which requires cognitive focus and analytical reasoning. The results here showed that virtual interaction uniquely hinders idea generation, and found that videoconferencing groups generate fewer creative ideas than in-person groups due to narrowed visual focus, and it found no evidence that videoconferencing groups are less effective when it comes to idea selection.
In the laboratory experiment, the researchers randomly assigned half of the pairs to work together in person and the other half to work together in separate, identical rooms using videoconferencing. The pairs in the virtual condition interacted with a real-time video of their partner’s face displayed on a 15-in retina-display screen with no self-view.
Pics: Nature