Why Keeping the Camera On Can Make Virtual Meetings a Little Less Tiring

… and calls with your international team more inclusive

Few things are ideal these days, and those of us who are fortunate enough to be able to work from home are counting our blessings. Still, what’s a pet peeve for many is the unprecedented amount of video calls — and the ensuing question about the extent to which we’re letting colleagues, managers and clients into our homes.

And we are letting them in: they hear the next-door neighbour DIYing while you are presenting the design of the new product, or a child practicing the violin as you are asked to give your input on the quarterly figures. Through the grapevine I heard of a call where the microphone picked up on loud snoring; it was somebody’s bulldog — or so they said.

Let’s face it, it can feel uncomfortable. Especially if you come from a cultural background where work and private life are kept relatively separate (and even if you don’t), perhaps you simply don’t feel like letting everyone on the global call into your private space. So the seemingly straightforward solution would be to turn the camera off. Click. But hang on a second, because in some sense, that camera is a secret little helper.

There is a fascinating phenomenon called the McGurk effect. It’s an auditory illusion, one that is very robust — so much so that you experience it even if you know how it works (you can try it out here). What is at its heart is that our senses don’t work in isolation: hearing, in fact, relies heavily on seeing. The McGurk effect is an entertaining example, but the fact that our senses work together has implications for virtual team work. This is especially true for international teams — but more on that later.

Because hearing is strongly influenced by visual input, there is, not surprisingly, a benefit to seeing the source that is producing the sound. This effect, that we can hear better what somebody is saying when we can see them, is called the audio-visual benefit, or AV benefit for short.

The AV benefit is perhaps best illustrated with an example of when it’s not there. When we have no visual input to support the audio, i.e. are relying on audio-only, our focus fully moves to the audio signal and as a consequence, background noise (think DIYing, the violin, the bulldog) becomes more salient. This has a real impact on our cognition, or more precisely on what is called word recognition: because our mind can’t be sure what exactly we’re hearing, the subconscious process of searching the database of words we know is more arduous and produces a longer list of possible candidates for a particular word, from which our mind then has to choose one. Sounds tiring? That’s because it is, as anyone who has ever been on a call with bad audio would know.

It can get worse, though, namely for international teams — and in particular for those on the call who are using their non-native language. Research shows that for those people, what I described above is amplified. For one thing, understanding speech among noise requires more effort in your foreign language than in your mother tongue. Even where listeners understand equally well, i.e. achieve the same level of so-called comprehension accuracy, it takes non-natives more effort than natives. Second, people who speak more than one language — i.e. anyone using a foreign language — have been found to rely on visual input more (and experience the McGurk effect more) than those who speak only one language. And third, while background noise makes word recognition harder for everyone, non-native speakers of the language in question are affected more than native speakers. But it doesn’t stop there, and those speaking with a foreign accent can do listeners a favour too: close-up videos help word recognition in accented speech, especially if the accent is stronger.

Whether and how strongly someone experiences an audio-visual benefit depends on a complex mix of reasons, with individual differences and language proficiency playing a role, too. It is always worth overcoming any camera-shyness though, given that generally speaking visual input helps understanding what is being said.

Arguing in favour of keeping the camera on, we shouldn’t forget that for those with hours and hours of video calling on their plate, factors like delays in the image signal and heightened self-awareness can make it exhausting in different ways. So, guard your privacy; perhaps turning your desk already does the job. Mind your energy levels and try to reduce the amount of calls. But when weighing up those factors against known benefits of video calling like seeing facial expressions and the interpersonal connection feeling ‘more real’, bear in mind the additional one: easier word recognition makes the call more inclusive for your international team.