What is Wrong with Your Zoom Meetings?
Can’t Keep My Eyes Off of Me
It’s not just you. All of those virtual team meetings, group study sessions, family gatherings where the “gathering” may be over hundreds or thousands of miles… all those faces seem to be staring straight at you. So, why do you keep staring at you, too?
According to psychologist and You-Tuber Dennis Relojo-Howell, while your attention keeps drifting over to your own face — with all of its unique you-ness — you can bet everyone else is doing the same. It’s not just social media influencers. It’s human evolution. We can’t get enough of our own faces, and our modern communication devices feed this addiction.
Since the first webcam chats from the early days of the internet, to the current Zoom and Google Hangouts age, virtual face-to-face interactions have become just like death and taxes — unavoidable. What this means is we’ve entered a new era of human communication, one where the norm has shifted from making direct eye contact to inadvertently fixating on our own image. So now that you know this, what can you do to stand out? Break away from the norm and focus on establishing genuine eye contact during your Zoom meetings. Do your best to look towards your webcam, or be cheeky and move the window of your own video feed closer to the camera.
Research shows that eye contact activates the limbic mirror system, meaning that the same neurons that are getting activated in someone’s brain will also get activated in yours when you share eye contact. Let’s say you’re on a Zoom call, pitching your case for a well-deserved promotion. You wholeheartedly believe that you’ve earned it. Every neuron in your brain is practically screaming “I deserve this promotion!”. Here’s the cool part: if you focus on sharing eye contact with your boss, the limbic mirror system kicks in. It’s as if your neurons start having a chat with her neurons, and before you know it, her brain starts getting the message too: “Hey, this person really does deserve a promotion!”.
Well done, you have now mastered the secret art of eye contact on Zoom, unlocking infinite wealth and power! Wait… it didn’t work? Something must be off. You’ve been staring into your webcam with the intensity of a thousand suns, but that special connection isn’t happening. Well, it turns out that while your eye contact game is strong, maybe a bit too much so, your video quality is pretty weak. Those soulful eyes of yours have been coming across like pixelated dots from a vintage video game. If you want that promotion, nailing your video quality is just as crucial as your impressive eye-gazing skills.
The Solution is Not What You Think
If your first thought is swapping out your current webcam with some flashy Optimus-Prime-looking device, go ahead and hit pause. Before you go and splurge on that pricey 4K webcam, know that the level of video quality you get on video calls is more dependent on another factor rather than your webcam: light.
According to the folks at Zoom, on their official Zoom Blog: “lighting is a form of communication in itself.” No different from a film or TV show, the amount and color of the light on screen can trigger a range of emotional responses from the viewer, before the person on the other end even utters a peep. Much like a rainy day might make you feel gloomy, seeing a person dimly lit can trigger negative emotions, and even suppress your brain’s release of melatonin. “We often associate darkness with conflict, confusion, and despair, due to its central role in our circadian patterns,” explains Zoom Blog. So, hold off on buying a new webcam if your current setup has the ambiance of Dracula’s lair — you will only waste a few hundred bucks and your boss still won’t be able to see your promotion-inducing gaze.
In general, when it comes to light and video quality, more = better. But what about color? Turns out, redder, warmer colors make our brains happier than colder, bluer ones. As you can see, the color and intensity of your light are important, but so are the direction of the light source, and the hardness of the light produced. Similarly, soft light is preferable to hard light. A face lit directly, with light that’s more soft and diffuse, comes across as friendly, trustworthy, and pleasing to the eye. The amount of information around this topic is huge, so I’ll leave the geeky deep dive for another article.
Let’s talk about solutions. First, there’s the DIY approach. Rearrange your setup to make use of your room’s natural light sources, maybe dust off an old lamp or two. Then there’s the upgrade route. The market for lighting products offers a buffet of options, each with its own pros and cons. Ring lights, key lights, lightbars, you name it.
But hold up, there’s an even juicer option on the horizon. Yours truly is cooking up something. It’s going to be smart, it’s going to be bright, it’s going to be awesome, and it’s coming soon. So, stay tuned and you might find the light at the end of the tunnel, or at least the light in front of your webcam.
