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Virtual meeting hinders creativity, study finds
The pandemic has changed the nature of office work, propelling a massive rise in videoconferencing that looks unlikely to abate as homeworking becomes more entrenched across the world.
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Kyalynn Moore-Wilson, a freshman, sits at a desk in her dorm room as she participates in a Zoom meeting for an 'Introduction to Psychology' course as classes begin amid the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the first day of the fall 2020 semester at the University of New Mexico on August 17, 2020 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Agence France Presse/Sam Wasson/Getty Images)
P
eople are worse at coming up with creative ideas during a video call compared to meeting in person, a study said Wednesday, suggesting that workplaces should prioritise brainstorming sessions for the office.
The pandemic has changed the nature of office work, propelling a massive rise in videoconferencing that looks unlikely to abate as homeworking becomes more entrenched across the world.
Seeking to find out how this huge change affects creativity, US researchers studied nearly 1,500 employees of a telecommunications company in Finland, Hungary, India, Israel and Portugal.
In pairs, either in person or on a Zoom call, the employees came up with as many creative ideas as they could for the company's products, then picked the best one.
The pairs who spoke in person came up with around 15 percent more, according to the study published in the Nature journal.
The researchers found similar results in an experiment involving more than 600 university students, who were also paired off and told to come up with creative ideas for either a frisbee or bubble wrap.
The in-person pairs came up with 14 percent more ideas.
