Should teams keep their cameras on during remote meetings?

The effects:

• Employees who keep their cameras on throughout their daily meetings end up more worn out and less engaged than when they just call in (Shockley et al, 2021).
• Video cues can reduce collective intelligence and can inhibit vocal cue synchronization (Tomprou et al, 2021).
• Cameras can inhibit idea generation (Brucks & Levav, 2022)

What does it depend on?

• Fatigue is worse for women (Fauville et al, 2021; Rattan et al, 2022; Shockley et al, 2021).
• Fatigue is worse for new employees (Shockley et al, 2021)
• Fatigue is worse when group belongingness is low (Bennett et al, 2021).

Why does it happen?

• Video requires more cognitive load (Hinds 2009; Fauville et al, 2021).
• Facial appearance dissatisfaction, worse for women (Rattan et al, 2022).
• Mirror anxiety, worse for women (Fauville et al, 2021) and consistent with the finding that seeing oneself makes video worse (Hassell and Cotton, 2017).
• Feeling physically trapped (Fauville et al, 2021).
• Hyper gaze from a grid of staring faces (Fauville et al, 2021).
• Cameras narrow visual focus, which can in turn narrow cognitive focus and curb creativity (Brucks & Levav, 2022)

Caveats

• It remains unclear whether effects depend on meeting types, like 1-1's vs. all-hands.
• This synthesis evaluates video relative to audio-only meetings, as opposed to vs. face-to-face.