Projects
Psychological outcomes of Zoom usage
Project overview
Objective: As part of my master's thesis, my goal was to extend the knowledge in the field of how video conferencing psychologically effects users, especially in a world that has became exceedingly remote.
Timeframe: 2 years (as part of my Master's thesis)
My role: Psychology Graduate Researcher
Team: Alecia Carolli (Lead researcher), Dr. Esther Greenglass (Supervisor), & Dr. Robert Cribbie (Second Committee Member)
Methods: Experimental between-subjects design featuring a survey (quantitative research)
Tools and programs: r Studio, Qualtrics, Excel
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Summary
Introduction: Self-evaluation during video conferencing is suspected to use attentional resources that contribute to cognitive load.
Study Overview: The current experimental study investigated the effects of having access to view oneself during a Zoom call on cognitive load, where participants either could or could not see themselves, while on camera on Zoom.
Methods: During the call, cognitive load was assessed through performance on a task (i.e., the Serial Sevens), followed by a survey.
Hypotheses: Women in comparison to men, and those high on self-consciousness were expected to experience more cognitive load, especially when they could see themselves.
Results: Those low on self-consciousness, experienced higher cognitive load when they could see themselves. Surprisingly, the opposite occurred for those high on self-consciousness as they experienced higher cognitive load when they could not see themselves. Also, women performed worse than men on the cognitive load task (indicating higher cognitive load), but this did not interact with self-view nor self consciousness.
Discussion: Further investigation is required to determine the factors contributing to these results. Potentially those high on self-consciousness experienced more cognitve load when they could not see themselves because they were anxious that they could not monitor their self image, causing more distraction than the actual act of seeing the self. We are uncertain why women experienced more cognitive load than men, as we did not find an interaction with self view or self-consciousness that would explain this gender difference.
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Key takeaways
Academic Takeaway: Self-consciousness along with access to one's live video feed, play important roles in how cognitively overloaded users feels during Zoom sessions. Researchers should be encouraged to further examine how individual differences and various video conferencing settings can psychological affect users.
Personal Takeaway: Given that this project spanned two-years, I learned how rigour and critical thinking can lead to a deep understanding of the research. For instance, I spent months analyzing the data using the statistical software, r Studio, including running statistical assumptions, descriptive statistics, simultaneous regressions, and probing interactions. From my in-depth statistical procedures, I learned so much more about the sample of 80 participants than I would have, had I only ran the most necessary analyses.
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