You think videoconferencing is the new normal? But it hinders creativity, study claims

Working from home and communicating with colleagues via video call? Then your creativity might be at risk.

A study published on Wednesday (April 27) mentions that people sometimes struggle to come up with creative ideas during a video call as compared to meeting in person.

The findings suggest that offices and workplaces should prioritise brainstorming sessions for the offices, which were forced to shut down during lockdowns due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

To understand how work-from-home affects creativity, US researchers studied nearly 1,500 employees of a telecommunications company in Finland, Hungary, India, Israel and Portugal.

Researchers attempted to find how creativity has been impacted due to the lack of in-person interaction and increase in video calls for regular meetings and sessions.

During the process, in pairs, in person or on a Zoom call, the employees came up with creative ideas for the company's products.

The study published in the Nature journal revealed that the pairs who spoke in person came up with around 15 per cent more.

The same method was applied in another set-up as the researchers found similar results in an experiment involving more than 600 university students.

Students were paired off and told to come up with creative ideas for either a frisbee or bubble wrap. The study noted that those in-person pairs came up with 14 per cent more ideas.

ALSO READ |Women more likely to have asthma attacks, deaths than men: Report

Findings in both experiments revealed that video calls were just as effective for selecting the best idea.

Meanwhile, to understand after analysing the findings and understanding the difference, the researchers tracked the gaze of the participants.

"In the virtual condition people are looking significantly more at their partner - almost double - at the expense of their broader environment," the study's co-author Melanie Brucks, an assistant marketing professor at Columbia University, said in a Nature video.

ALSO READ |Fascinating fact: Giant Moon of Saturn has a Earth-like landscape

The study said that "videoconferencing hampers idea generation because it focuses communicators on a screen, which prompts a narrower cognitive focus".

That kind of focus might help select the best idea -- but hinder coming up with one in the first place.

Brucks added, "We're most creative when we're unfocused and free. I always suggest turning off the camera during idea generation, so you can walk around, you can look around."

WATCH WION LIVE HERE

(With inputs from agencies)