Thoughts are free? Not in video meetings!


»Shall we meet in person or do we make a video call?« This question will remain for many, even if the corona virus has joined the ranks of endemic pathogens. Surveys indicate that many employees want to continue to work more from their home office. The big disadvantage: Creativity suffers when talking on the screen. Melanie Brucks from Columbia University and Jonathan Levav from Stanford University came to the conclusion in the journal »Nature«.

First, around 300 test pairs were asked to consider how a Frisbee or bubble wrap could be used in the most unusual way possible. While half of the interlocutors sat across from each other, the other part communicated in a video conference. Students then rated how new the subjects’ ideas were. Fewer ideas emerged in the digital encounters, which were also less creative than the suggestions that were generated during a real meeting. However, when it came to selecting the best idea, video meetings were equal.

To find out exactly what made the people sitting across from each other more creative, the marketing researchers furnished the laboratory rooms with various, more or less unusual objects. When the participants sat together, they looked around the room more often and were able to remember more details from the environment after the experiment. The more often they looked around and the more objects they remembered, the more creative ideas they developed, the researchers report. In a video conference, on the other hand, the gaze lingered more on the screen. According to Brucks and Levav, this confirms the hypothesis that virtual communication narrows the field of vision, making it less possible to think »out of the box«.



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