STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have a story now about - hard for you to follow what's happening - calls - sorry, the video call seems a little glitchy here, but I think it's better now. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce reports on those Zoom or Teams or Google calls so many people do where little disruptions can have big effects.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE, BYLINE: Occasionally, video glitches are funny, like that viral video of a lawyer appearing before a judge on Zoom with a filter accidentally turned on that made him look like a worried white kitten.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED LAWYER: I'm here live. That's not - I'm not a cat.
UNIDENTIFIED JUDGE: I can see that.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Most of the time, though, glitches are less delightful, and some new experiments show that they could really hurt you. In the journal Nature, researchers say they got people to watch simulations of job interviews, a sales pitch, a medical consultation - all the kinds of things that can happen online. Melanie Brucks is with Columbia University. She says sometimes they'd add tiny glitches in the video.
MELANIE BRUCKS: We intentionally put these short freezes during pauses in speech.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: It turns out these freezes and other kinds of little glitches had a real effect. People were less likely to want to hire someone or to believe a sales pitch or to trust medical advice. In the journal Nature, the researchers also say they analyzed real-world data from hundreds of online parole hearings. People whose video calls had glitches were less likely to be granted parole. Jacqueline Rifkin is with Cornell University. She says when people see a computer animation that looks almost perfectly human, but not quite, they get this uncanny feeling. And a video glitch is similar.
JACQUELINE RIFKIN: You realize, oh, I'm not actually across the table from you. Something's going on that's kind of shattered the illusion somehow. And that's where that strangeness, that eeriness comes in.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: She says so far in their experiments, the only potential way to dispel that bad feeling is having the speaker crack a joke after the glitch.
RIFKIN: Humor is very subjective. We are dorks. Our joke was probably not that funny.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Judge for yourself. Here's the joke they tested.
RIFKIN: They say that some internet connections are better than others. I guess this one's one of the others.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This attempt at humor got rid of some of the negative feelings, but it wasn't as good as being glitch-free. So if a meeting is important, make sure your internet connection is one of the better ones.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
