New research shows that the longer people look at their own heads during virtual meetings, the more their mood deteriorates during the meeting.

And anyone who sips an alcoholic drink during such a Zoom meeting – whether in secret, or quite legitimately during a virtual Friday afternoon drink – is even worse off. Because under the influence of alcohol, people appeared to look at themselves more often during the meeting and their mood took an even sharper nosedive.

The research

That can be read in the magazine Clinical Psychological Science† “We used eye trackingtechnology to explore the relationship between mood, alcohol and attentional focus during virtual social interactions,” said researcher Talia Ariss. Subjects completed questionnaires about their emotional status prior to the online meeting. They did the same afterwards. During the meeting, in addition to the head of their interlocutor – with whom they had to talk about their music preferences, among other things – they also saw their own image on the screen. Some subjects consumed an alcoholic drink prior to the interview. Others were offered a non-alcoholic drink. And during the conversation, eye tracking thus established what the subjects were looking at. “We found that subjects who looked more at themselves during the conversations felt worse after the meeting (…) And those who were under the influence of alcohol looked more at themselves.”

“We’re not sure if people felt worse for looking at themselves,” study researcher Catharine Fairbairn said Scientias.nl† “But what we do know is that they stopped looking at themselves because they were already in a bad mood prior to the meeting.” In other words, that mood really deteriorated during the meeting. And so the mood of people who looked a lot at themselves suffered the most.

Focus on yourself

The discovery does not even come as a very big surprise to the researchers. Previous studies have already shown that people who focus more on themselves than on external factors, especially during social interactions, are more prone to mood disorders. “The more self-focused someone is, the more likely they are to report emotions that align with anxiety and even depression,” Ariss said.

Alcohol doesn’t help

What did surprise the researchers, however, is how the subjects’ mood developed during the virtual meetings when they had consumed an alcoholic drink. “There is strong evidence that during social interactions in person (ie where people come together physically, ed.) alcohol acts as a kind of social lubricant and improves mood,” says Ariss. “But that turned out not to be the case for online conversations, where alcohol consumption made people even more focused on themselves and had no positive effect on mood.”

grumpy and tired

The research may help explain why Zoom meetings are so exhausting and generally not very mood-boosting. “Based on this study, no causal relationships can be drawn,” emphasizes Fairbairn. “But when you consider these results along with the many studies linking self-centeredness to low mood, it’s certainly not a bad idea (that your own image on the screen contributes to a bad mood, ed. ).”

Out

A solution seems obvious; make sure you don’t see yourself on the screen. “Once you’ve checked that you’re good to see and your hair isn’t all over the place, it may be worth your while self view so you can focus on the other faces,” said Fairbairn. “At this point in the pandemic, many of us have come to realize that virtual interactions are just not the same as face-to-face interactions with someone else. Many people struggle with fatigue and melancholy after a day of Zoom meetings. And our study suggests that your own image that you can see on many video platforms makes these interactions more difficult than necessary.”

Although the research by Fairbairn and colleagues is not suitable for determining exactly how certain emotions emerge during virtual interactions, and it mainly remains at correlations, Fairbairn dares to state on the basis of her research that those virtual interactions are really incomparable. with the meetings in the traditional conference room. “The virtual is – when it comes to the social elements – an as yet unexplored universe. Things we thought we knew about interactions can turn out very differently online. Rather than making assumptions, it’s worth investigating further.”