Research Confirms Deeper Brain Connections When In-Person vs Zoom

Prior in-person experiences form brain connections that improve remote work communication

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In This Edition - Deeper Brain Engagement Improves Remote Communication

Recent research shows that when folks are in-person their brains react differently and more deeply compared to when they see each other over a video link. This could be used by some as a justification for moving back to the office but that would only be seeing part of the story. Not all worker interactions need to be in-person, it would be inefficient and costly, but using leaner media forms opens the door for misunderstanding. This post presents the reasons why remote communicators will understand each other better if they have an in-person experience base to draw from.

I think most of us would agree that there is an experiential difference between reading an email, talking to someone on the telephone, meeting them in a Zoom call, or spending time with them in person. When I ask people about this they usually say, “It’s just different. There is something about being in the same room with someone that is different from the others. Not sure how to explain it.” This article offers an explanation for why this happens and offers a tip for how to manage the remote/in-office debate.

Image created by Ed Paulson using CoPilot for Windows.

I have authored many books that were acquired, edited, and published by people I knew only through email, snail mail, or a rare telephone conversation. Were these people I knew? Yes … functionally. We knew each other through a limited window … what was written on the page. Over time we became more familiar with each other, learned each other’s editing quirks, and finally produced a book we could be proud of, but I wouldn’t call those close relationships and it would be disingenuous to say that I “knew” them well. In reality, I may have sat right next to them in a restaurant and not known it.

If the interactions move to the telephone, we get another level of interaction that is not possible with static media such as email or text. We can hear each other’s voice, listen to inflections, and pauses, and engage on a real-time basis, which adds another level of familiarity. Social graces in the USA and many other locales require that a few moments be spent on “small talk” at the start/end of the conversation that often offers more insight into the person on the other side, but this is still limited. We cannot see them or watch how they are reacting during our conversation. I could say I am better acquainted with this person, but not that I knew them beyond a superficial level. The conversations would be mostly functional and not personal.

When video teleconferencing enters the picture (pun intended 😊) we can see as well as hear them. This adds another level of familiarity beyond just the voice, and it is common for folks to say something like, “It is great to finally put a face to the name/voice” at the beginning of their first video conference. And it is true. We feel better when we can see someone because that is how our brains were wired over tens of thousands of years, long before all this technology was even dreamed of. So, it would make sense to me that even with the important additional cues that come with video conferencing, there would still be something missing when compared to in-person interaction.

That brings us to the most rich and engaging level of communication: in-person interaction. This is how our brains were wired to interact. Going back in time to the early days of our species, there was no form of interaction other than in-person. Our ancestors made determinations about people initially based on what they saw and over time based on their personal interactions. Reflecting on neuroplasticity as the encoding that forms the wiring of our mental processes, these early experiences formed the programming that makes us better tuned to communicate in a face-to-face environment than any other, because that is how we were initially wired neurologically.

Let’s bring in a study published in The Journal of Neuroscience¹ that presented interesting, and I think well done work about the different way that brains react to facial images based on prior exposure. Researchers divided subjects into three groups. One group was given a set of photographs of people that they studied to become familiar with them. A second group watched a whole season of a television series such as The Americans which would make them familiar with the main characters of the show. A third group had in-person meetings with lab assistants with the goal of gaining familiarity. Each group was later shown photographs of the people who were the focus of their earlier familiarity exposure while researchers measured subject responses using various sophisticated techniques including EEG, which measured brain activity.

The results from this study were clear: The level of perceived familiarity in the minds of the test subjects was much higher for those who were part of the in-person portion of the experiment.

I don’t think these results were unexpected. There is a significant difference between passively looking at photographs or watching a season of a TV show when compared to actively engaging with another human being in-person. By actively engaging, we use various portions of our brains that are not necessary when passively watching a show. We see their eyes, not an image of their eyes. We see how they move while we talk. We might have shaken hands or hugged, which offered another level of engagement. All these things are simply not possible with video conference. The interaction is different and more engaging. Zoom in some ways can feel like watching a TV show, especially if you are not involved as a presenter.

A recent study published in Imaging Neuroscience² adds further support for the contention that in-person is different from video conference. This experiment involved subjects staring at each other first in person and then over video conference link. A bunch of measurements were taken of each subject during the tests to monitor their level of brain activity. The results indicated a clear difference between in-person and video conference, with in-person showing increased brain activity in both participants when compared to video conference. In other words, more of the brain was engaged when in-person than during a video conference.

What I found fascinating was that those engaged in-person simultaneously shared similar brain excitations which implies that the two people were stimulating each other in similar ways. The researchers believe that this increased brain activity may be due to a higher perception level of micromovements, or mini communication cues, which send information to the brain in a different way when in-person as opposed to with video conference.

One of the authors summed it all up by saying, “Online representations of faces, at least with the current technology, do not have the same ‘privileged access’ to social neural circuitry in the brain that is typical of the real thing.”³

All this research clearly shows that even though video conference offers more and richer information cues than telephone, email, or texting, it is not an equal substitute for in-person engagement which connects message sender and receiver brains in a more robust manner. This may explain why people who have prior experience with each other can often communicate effectively using less rich media such as email or text, where those with no prior experience are advised to use richer media such as telephone, video conference, or in person whenever a topic becomes more complex.

Relating these results to neuroplasticity and memory storage helps explain these communication differences. The prior in-person experiences created more intricate neural connections within the brain that may become activated when reading an email message from a particular person. Remember, our brains remember things through association and the larger the number of associations related to a particular topic, like the message sender’s identity, the more comprehensive will be our understanding of the sender’s intent. For a lean media such as email, this prior experience helps us fill in the understanding gaps to help us properly interpret their message.

To be clear, I am not making the case that all communication should be done in-person. This would be highly inefficient, costly, and unnecessary. But in-person experience should be factored into a communication plan at some level.

There is, however, a strong case for using in-person interactions, a rich communication media, to foster mental relationships between workers before they move to the less rich remote media options. This approach improves the likelihood of proper understanding between remote workers.

I can say from personal experience that no matter how much I engage with someone online or through Zoom, I do not feel the same engagement with them as I do with others with whom I have a prior, in-person relationship. My brain simply reacts in a different way, which is OK with me. Science indicates that I am not alone in that feeling. Instead of fighting it, managers should recognize it and use it as part of their remote work management design.

#communication, #neuroplasticity, #mediarichness, #remotework

QUESTIONS FOR YOU

1. Have you found that knowing someone in-person helps you understand them better when communicating remotely?

2. Have you found that spending a lot of time with someone in video conferences offered a similar experience base to what you would get through in-person experience?

3. Have you noticed that communicating remotely with someone new is more difficult than with someone you have known for a while?

4. Any other questions or ideas you may have?

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1. “Getting to Know You: Emerging Neural Representations during Face Familiarization”

2. “Separable Processes for live in-person and live zoom-like faces”

3. “Zoom Conversations vs In-Person: Brain Activity Tells a Different Tale”