📲 Video Calls Are Killing Your Creativity
How remote work hinders collaborative ingenuity
Remote work is a daily reality for many of us, and it’s a good thing for the most part. We can replace hours of commuting with worthwhile activities like enjoying friends, family, and hobbies. And on the business side, companies can access a global pool of employee talent rather than a tiny pool of talent who can reach a local physical office.
However, there aren’t many blessings in life that come without costs. The most obvious cost of remote work is the absence of in-person communication. Video calls work well for keeping communication channels open and keeping a business running, but they limit conversation quality. Time lags and imperfect visuals hinder a person’s ability to emotionally connect with others. Too much screen-time alone at home can also make people feel trapped and reduce their physical activity.
Since video calls are usually scheduled, they generally don’t allow for spontaneous chats either. You can’t casually discuss ideas with a person you spot in the kitchen or grab lunch with someone you meet in an elevator. Some of my biggest moments of connection, collaboration, and inspiration have come during completely spontaneous meetings.
Even with the best possible internet connection, video calls only allow you to inhabit a virtual space with other people via the four corners of your screen. This is very different from inhabiting the same physical space of a room. Researchers are finding that these limits on video calls may be hurting one of our most important cognitive resources: our creativity.
💻 The creativity cost of remote work
In a paper published in April 2022, researchers from Columbia and Stanford University recruited 602 people for a simple lab study. They randomly paired people up and asked each pair to collaboratively list as many uses as they could for commonplace items such as a frisbee or bubble wrap. This is known as the “alternative uses task”, and it’s often used to measure creativity. Creative people find it easier to come up with novel and unusual uses for each item.
After participant pairs worked on ideas for five minutes, they were asked to spend an additional minute selecting what they thought was the most creative idea on their list.
Communication among each pair happened either in-person or via a video call. The researchers counted how many ideas each pair came up with and asked two independent judges to blindly rate how creative and valuable each idea was.
The results showed that in-person collaborators created more ideas overall than virtual collaborators did. On average, their list was two items longer (16.77 vs 14.74 ideas). Based on judge scores, in-person collaborators were also better at coming up with highly creative ideas (7.92 vs 6.73 creative ideas).
Interestingly though, the virtual collaborators were slightly better at selecting the most creative idea on their list at the end of the exercise. On a scale of 1-7, final choices of virtual collaborators scored an average 4.28 in creativity compared to 4.08 for in-person collaborators. So although there was a creativity advantage for in-person communication, there were signs of a small decision quality advantage for video calls.
The researchers wanted to know whether the creativity deficiency for virtual collaborators was driven by people’s narrow focus on a computer screen. So they ran the study with a different group of participants, this time tracking their eye movements and placing random props in each person’s room to test how much they would notice and remember details about their environment.
Compared to in-person pairs, virtual pairs spent more time staring at their partner while they collaborated and less time looking at the room around them. Virtual pairs also recalled fewer environmental props during a later memory test outside the room. These weren’t just meaningless metrics; people who explored their environment also had better scores in the creativity task.
In other words, virtual collaboration narrows attentional focus and gives people less mental space to be creative. In a natural in-person social environment, people are more comfortable with letting their minds wander as they communicate, which allows them to access broader inspiration. At a computer screen on the other hand, they’re more likely to stare at the rectangle of light in front of them.
To test these effects in the real world, the researchers ran the same study with 1490 engineers at a multinational telecommunications company. Instead of asking them to come up with strange uses for bubble wrap, the researchers gave everyone a critical, work-relevant task: generate as many new product ideas for the company as possible. Similar to the lab-based tasks, participants were randomly paired up to collaborate during either a video call or an in-person meeting.
Replicating the lab results, virtually communicating engineers came up with fewer total ideas and fewer creative ideas than in-person engineers did. But once again, the virtual group were marginally better at choosing a final idea from their list.
Communicating with people through a computer screen has its downsides, and creativity seems to be one of them. Video calls are just as good as in-person meetings for some tasks and might even offer an advantage for particular types of prioritization-related decision-making. But when you need to think outside the box and generate unique ideas with other people, it’s better to get together in person.
⭐️ Takeaway tips
Beware of screen-related creativity risks: Online communication allows us to collaborate with people all around the world, and there’s no denying how powerful and wonderful that is. At the same time, collaboration via video call isn’t ideal for creativity. Video calls change our social behavior; they give us tunnel vision as we communicate, focusing us more on the screen and less on relaxed exploration. When you’re next brainstorming on a call, try to maintain an open rather than narrow mindset. That might mean you spend less time looking directly at the other person and more time with your eyes wandering in a way that helps you think.
Make time for in-person events: With the increasing prevalence of full-time remote work, finding time for in-person get-togethers is more difficult and more important than ever. Occasional in-person meetups may help to reduce the social and creative risks of video calls. Quarterly or yearly company away days help to give all employees the chance to properly interact, and smaller meetups between proximate colleagues can scratch a social itch more regularly. I recommend checking out how the team at Automattic have navigated this landscape effectively (here’s an article describing how their yearly in-person meetups improve social dynamics).
Let people know: Since the creativity costs of video calls are related to social decision-making, tell your friends and colleagues about the challenges identified by this research. It’s easier to come up with workable solutions when people with diverse perspectives get their heads together (especially if those heads come together in the same room rather than a video call). And if you’re glancing around your room when you next video chat with someone, they’ll know you’re not bored but rather gaining some exploratory headspace!
💡 A final quote
“Good communication is stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”
~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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📬 I love to hear from readers. Leave a comment on this post or feel free to email me your questions.
👋 Until next time,
Erman Misirlisoy, PhD
Great article!
There is even much more to it than creativity. In-person communication fosters mutual understanding, a shared purpose and motivation.
I have noticed that working remotely kills motivation and increases turnaround time by a large factor. Explaining things is far easier and more pleasant in-person.
Few people notice this negative effect of working remotely because people are still very busy, which masks the lack of meaningfull progress.