Zoom fatigue, the feeling of exhaustion that comes from a day of back-to-back online meetings is greater for women than men. One in seven women reported feeling very to extremely fatigued after Zoom calls.
Zoom fatigue, the feeling of exhaustion that comes from a day of back-to-back online meetings is greater for women than men, revealed a new Stanford University research. What contributed most to the feeling of exhaustion among women was an increase in what social psychologists describe as "self-focused attention" triggered by the self-view in video conferencing, according to the study released on the Social Science Research Network.
‘One in seven women -- 13.8 per cent -- compared with one in 20 men -- 5.5 per cent -- reported feeling "very" to "extremely" fatigued after Zoom calls.’
"Self-focused attention refers to a heightened awareness of how one comes across or how one appears in a conversation," said co-author of the new study Jeffrey Hancock, Professor of Communication in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The researchers found that while women have the same number of meetings per day as men, their meetings tend to run longer.
Women were also less likely to take breaks between meetings, another factor that contributed to increased weariness, according to the study.
These new findings build on a paper the Stanford researchers recently published in the journal Technology, Mind and Behavior that explored why people might feel exhausted following video conference calls.
The new research shows who is feeling the strain.
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"We've all heard stories about Zoom fatigue and anecdotal evidence that women are affected more, but now we have quantitative data that Zoom fatigue is worse for women, and more importantly, we know why," Hancock said.
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A way to avoid this is to change the default display settings and turn off "self-view."
Also contributing to an increase in Zoom fatigue among women were feelings of being physically trapped by the need to stay centred in the camera's field of view, said the study.
What people can do to address this is to move farther away from the screen or to turn off one's video during parts of calls.
Source-IANS