“Zoom Fatigue” Is Real
Studies have found empirical support for our sense of feeling more depleted after a teleconference than a live meeting. University of Gothenburg and Stanford University scientists found that online meeting participants experience increased weariness compared to their in-person counterparts. G. Fauville, et al., “Zoom Exhaustion & Fatigue Scale,” Computers in Human Behavior Reports 4 (2021). The researchers found various contributors including a higher cognitive load, close-range eye contact, and reduced visual mobility. Their data indicate that the negative consequences of online meetings correlate to the duration and frequency of those meetings.
Researchers at the Universities of Georgia and Arizona produced similar results, but concluded that the fatigue existed regardless of the number or length of meetings. K. Shockley, et al., “The Fatiguing Effects of Camera Use in Virtual Meetings: A Within-Person Field Experiment,” Journal of Applied Psychology 106:8 (2021). Their findings suggested that the negative consequences of not being physically present were significantly greater for women.
Potential Solution: Increased Breaks
Microsoft’s Human Factors Group (formerly Human Factors Lab) recently used electroencephalography (EEG) monitors to measure brain-wave activity during virtual meetings. The group asked participants to engage in four online meetings on two consecutive Mondays. On the first day, the group attended the meetings back-to-back; a week later, researchers encouraged participants to meditate during 10-minute breaks. The EEG results revealed a significant difference in beta waves. More specifically, those who had breaks showed positive levels of frontal alpha asymmetry, which correlates to decreased stress and increased interpersonal engagement. Microsoft Human Factors Lab, “Research Proves Your Brain Needs Breaks,” (2021).
Additionally, the Gothenburg/Stanford researchers opined that even taking an “audio only” break during a longer meeting can be helpful. They also reported that reducing the size of the images on the screen and staying visually connected with things in their physical location (other than the computer) can significantly reduce fatigue.
Virtual Meetings Can Result in Increased Depression
The Gothenburg/Stanford study as well as another one from the University of Illinois found evidence of a correlation between watching oneself during online meetings and being in a negative mood (the Illinois study also found that alcohol consumption increases the propensity to look at oneself on the screen). T. Ariss, et al., “Where to look? Alcohol, Affect, and Gaze Behavior During a Virtual Social Interaction,” Clinical Psych. Sci.,(2022).
Potential Solution: Minimizing Ourselves
Simply turning off the “self view” feature or minimizing our own image provides a simple way to mitigate this consequence.
Trust Formation in Virtual Mediation
“[T]he online environment poses significant threats to the formation and maintenance of trust.” N. Ebner & J. Thompson, “@ Face Value? Nonverbal Communication & Trust Development in Online Videobased Mediation [sic],” 1 Int’l J. Online Disp. Resol., 2 (2014) p. 22. Stanford’s So Yeong Park and University of Pennsylvania’s Mark Whiting observe that teleconferencing “can provide a false affordance of visibility—it tricks us into thinking we know more than we actually do about what the other person means.” S. Y. Park & M. Whiting, “Beyond Zooming there: Understanding nonverbal interaction online,” (2020) p. 3. Park and Whiting document that “misunderstandings and accumulation of negative emotion” are more common in virtual settings. Id., p. 7. This is particularly problematic for online mediation, which, by its nature, is ripe with conflict.
Creighton University’s Noam Ebner has studied virtual mediation extensively and has reached similar conclusions. Ebner states that the problem with video negotiations is that participants think that they are receiving the full range of non-verbal cues (i.e., information that is absent in written or telephone communication), but, the brain’s difficulty in picking up these nuances from video images limits what is available to process; this likely undermines trust formation. N. Ebner, “The Human Touch in ODR; Trust, Empathy, and Social Intuition in Online Negotiation and Mediation” in Abdel, et al., eds., Online Dispute Resolution: Theory and Practice: A Treatise on Technology and Dispute Resolution, 2d ed. (2021) § 3.5.4.1ff. While some of the “solutions” described in the previous sections can be helpful, Ebner opines that to make up for the inherent disadvantage in the online setting, all participants must increase their communication effectiveness. This requires them to engage in increased displays of empathy and take extra steps to make sure that messages are clearly sent and accurately received. Id., § 4. This is particularly true since our conscious mind is hijacked by our emotional reactions much more frequently than we would like to acknowledge.
Making All Mediation Formats More Effective
The challenges inherent in virtual mediation present an opportunity for us to better understand the emotional realities that control much of what happens in dispute resolution and, thereby, improve the effectiveness of all types of mediation. As practitioners, we expect emotions to be prevalent in settlement meetings involving a wrongful-death suit, sexual-harassment claim, conflict between small business partners, etc. As Harvard and University of Chicago researchers state:
People display bounded rationality: They suffer from certain biases, such as overoptimism and self-serving conceptions of fairness; they follow heuristics, such as availability, that lead to mistakes; and they behave in accordance with prospect theory rather than expected utility theory.
C. Jolls, et al., “A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics,” 50 Stan. L. Rev. 1471 (1998), p. 1545. While we may assume that those who are professionally trained to filter out emotions during conflict resolution—such as attorneys and risk managers—are immune from being driven by irrational factors, the research suggests otherwise.
This is, perhaps, best demonstrated by a study of another group of rationally trained professionals: Harvard Medical School physicians. They were asked to decide between two treatments for lung cancer: surgery or radiation. Half of the participants were informed that surgery had a one-month survival rate of 90 percent; the other half were told it had a 10 percent mortality rate in the first month. Even though both statements accurately described the same data point, 84 percent of those seeing the first statement chose the operation, while only 50 percent of those who saw the second statement selected surgery. B. McNeil, et al., “On the Elicitation of Preferences for Alternative Therapies,” N. Engl. J. Med., 306 (1982) pp. 1259–62. Put another way, professional training and experience cannot completely resist our subconscious responses.
Law professor Jean Sternlight summarizes the fallacy that we can force people to think “logically” by shutting down their emotional responses:
The key to changing minds and helping people appreciate others’ perspectives turns out to be connected to innately human factors such as emotion, liking, empathy, rapport, and means of communication.
J. Sternlight, "Pouring a Little Psychological Cold Water on Online Dispute Resolution," Scholarly Commons @ UNLV Boyd Law, p. 13, (2020). Applied to settlement discussions, “if the mediator does not listen to the parties or understand their emotions, the mediation will go nowhere.” A. Krause, “Striking Accord: Composing A High Quality and Meaningful Mediation,” 33 U. La Verne L. Rev. 147 (2011) p. 156.
Affirming, rather than discouraging, passionate expressions during settlement discussions can seem counterintuitive, but research indicates that it is the best way to improve the conflict-resolution process. Summarizing the psychological literature, law professor Peter Reilly asserts that the key is to listen such that we can reflect back what is said in terms that are fully embraced by the speaker. P. Reilly, “Mindfulness, Emotions, and Mental Models: Theory That Leads to More Effective Dispute Resolution,” 10 Nev. L. J. 433 (2010), p. 444. This frees them from the fear of being misunderstood, increases trust, and opens the speaker to be guided toward the next step toward settlement.
Conclusion
Virtual mediation’s reliance on teleconferencing makes it vulnerable to a variety of potential hindrances. While some have relatively simple fixes, others, such as undermined trust formation, require critically examining how we communicate. By acknowledging that our decision making is significantly directed by subconscious factors and connecting with parties on an emotive level, we can significantly improve the outcomes of both in-person and computer-based mediation.
