I love back-to-back Zoom meetings! Said no one…EVER.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Working from home has its PJ’s–I, I mean PERKS!! GOSH, I can’t think straight with all these pesky Zoom calls. Are they actually draining… our productivity?
Enter Melanie Brucks of Columbia University and Jonathan Levav at Stanford University. They randomly paired up over six hundred people. Each pair worked together – either in person or virtually – to come up with creative uses for a product. Then they ranked their ideas. Each team was rated, based on their number of NOVEL ideas.
AND? Sorry remote workers! Virtual pairs had significantly fewer creative ideas than the in-person teams. Why? Through eye tracking, researchers saw that participants’ visual field was reduced mostly to the screen. This narrow field of vision might be a reason for narrower thinking.
This research suggests that some meetings SHOULD be at the office!
But good luck getting me out of these PJ’s … I just don’t see it!
Reference: Brucks, M. S., & Levav, J. (2022). Virtual communication curbs creative idea generation. Nature, 605(7908), 108-112.https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04643-y