Scientists specifically advise women to turn off the camera during video meetings

A scientific study specifically advises women and new employees to turn off the camera during work video meetings.

Researchers at multiple institutions in America, including the University of Arizona and the University of Arkansas, found that company employees who operate their cameras during video calls on social media platforms such as Zoom experienced greater fatigue at the end of the day.
An interesting finding in the study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology was that women and new hires were more fatigued from using the cameras.

The purpose of the study

The study aims primarily to gain a better understanding of how a salient feature of virtual “cameras” meetings affects fatigue, which may affect outcomes during meetings.

The researchers indicated that the results of their study apply to the “Zoom” platform, which has risen in popularity since the Corona virus closure began more than 18 months ago, in addition to “WebX”, “Microsoft Teams” and “Skype”.

The study was based on 1,408 daily observations from 103 employees, who turned cameras on and off during video calls.

Participants were recruited from Broad Bath, a healthcare company located in Tucson, Arizona, that employs several thousand remote workers in the United States.

The duration of the study was only 4 weeks, or 19 working days to be exact, in August and September 2020.

Half of the participants turned on the camera in the first two weeks of the study, then switched to keeping their cameras off for the next two weeks, and the other half did the opposite.

At the end of each workday, participants receive a link from researchers that includes a daily survey assessing workday fatigue, as well as two other performance-related factors (voice and interaction) in virtual meetings.

Women are more affected than men

After pooling and analyzing the results, the researchers found a link between higher levels of fatigue and camera operation, and that this association was stronger for women than for men.

They also found that turning on the camera contributed to lower levels of performance-related factors (sound and interaction).

It is noteworthy that this is the first study to find that “Zoom stress” affects women more than men. Zoom application.

The reason, they said, is that women tend to have longer meetings and are more prone to anxiety caused by the self-presentation feature.