If your video calls keep flickering and freezing, the stakes may be higher than a few moments of awkwardness. Experiments show that glitches during video calls can ruin your chances of success.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Our story now is about – you're having a hard time following what's going on – calls – sorry, the video call here seems a little glitchy, but I think it's better now. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyes reports on the Zoom, Teams or Google calls that so many people make, where small glitches can have big consequences.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: Sometimes video glitches can be funny, like this viral video of a lawyer appearing before a judge on Zoom with a filter accidentally turned on that makes him look like a troubled white kitten.
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UNIDENTIFIED LAWYER: I'm alive here. That's not true, I'm not a cat.
UNIDENTIFIED JUDGE: I can see that.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Most of the time, however, the glitches are less pleasant, and some new experiments show they can actually harm you. In the journal Nature, the researchers say they had people watch simulations of job interviews, business proposals, medical consultations—all sorts of things that might happen on the Internet. Melanie Brooks works at Columbia University. She says sometimes small glitches were added to the video.
MELANIE BROOKS: We intentionally place these short pauses during pauses in speech.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: It turns out that these freezes and other small glitches had a real effect. People were less likely to hire someone, trust sales pitches, or trust medical advice. Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers also say they analyzed real data from hundreds of online parole hearings. People whose video calls had glitches were less likely to be granted parole. Jacqueline Rifkin works at Cornell University. She says that when people see computer animation that looks almost perfectly human, but not quite, they get a strange feeling. And the video glitch is similar.
JACQUELINE RIFKIN: You know, oh, I'm not actually sitting across the table from you. Something happens that somehow breaks the illusion. And this is where this strangeness, this creepiness arises.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says that so far in their experiments, the only potential way to dispel that bad feeling is to have the speaker make a joke after a glitch.
RIFKIN: Humor is very subjective. We're assholes. Our joke probably wasn't that funny.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Judge for yourself. Here's the joke they tested.
RIFKIN: They say some Internet connections are better than others. I think it's one of the others.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This attempt at humor took away some of the negative feelings, but it wasn't as good as not having glitches. So if the meeting is important, make sure your internet connection is one of the best.
Nell Greenfieldboys, NPR News.
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