Are first impressions on Zoom the same as face-to-face?

One result of the initial phases of the Covid-19 pandemic is the now widespread use of videoconferencing, even for important meetings such as job interviews and health assessments. However, note the authors of a new study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, many people report feeling that it's harder to get a read on a new acquaintance through a screen. 

Marie-Catherine Mignault at Cornell University and colleagues wondered whether this perception is right — is it actually more difficult to form accurate first impressions of another person's personality during a videoconference, compared with meeting face-to-face? They designed a study to find out.

The team recruited 938 strangers for round-robin 'getting to know you' sessions in pairs, held via Zoom. They also recruited another 306 people who followed the same meeting procedure, but who did so in person. These participants first completed personality questionnaires (including a version of the Big Five Personality Inventory) and nominated three friends or family to complete these same questionnaires, about them. The team used all of this data to generate a personality profile for each participant.

During the brief, two-minute-long one-on-one sessions with others in their group, the participants were asked to 'just introduce yourself and try to get to know one another.' After each interaction, they completed a questionnaire about the other's personality and rated how much they liked them. The Zoom groups also rated the audio-video quality during the meeting.

The team's analysis revealed found that, overall, the participants were able to perceive each other's unique personality just as well via Zoom as in person. They also liked the other person just as well when they met via a screen. In addition, whether they formed a new acquaintanceship via Zoom or face to face, they were just as likely to rate their partners' personalities 'normatively' — that is, in line with the sample's average, socially desirable profile of traits.

However, a deeper analysis of the data did reveal that some aspects of personality were evaluated more accurately in person than via Zoom, while for others, the reverse was true. Specifically, the team found that aspects judged by a separate group of participants to be more easily observable during a first encounter — such as being 'assertive' and 'energetic' — were more accurately perceived in person than on Zoom. In contrast, aspects rated as being less observable — such as being 'original' — were more likely to be perceived accurately on Zoom. Some of the data also suggested that intelligence and openness were perceived more accurately on Zoom than in person.

To explain this, the team suggests that more visible cues to personality — such as larger and faster movements, signalling higher energy — might be easier to express in person. Some personality cues that are absent from in person meetings, but which can be present during a Zoom meeting — such as the type of books on a bookcase or wall art — may, though, act as useful cues to less visible aspects of personality, such as originality.

Their analysis of the data also revealed another potentially even more important finding, however: when the audio-visual quality during a Zoom meeting was rated as being relatively poor, participants formed less accurate impressions of the other person's personality.

There are a few possible reasons for this. Naturally, clearer audio and video could have made it easier for the participants to pick up on signals of aspects of personality. It may also be the case, however, that poorer quality audio and video could have been frustrating, making them less engaged and interested in the other person. There are hints in the data that this was indeed the case, the team reports.

Their finding that relatively poor audio and video quality impedes accurate personality perceptions could have an undesirable and unfair impact on all kinds of decisions that relate to performance during a videoconference, such as job-hiring decisions, the team writes. 

With more job interviews now happening online, "one potential consequence is that people without access to high-speed internet, such as those from rural areas, minority neighbourhoods, and lower in socio-economic status, might be systematically perceived less accurately and less positively," they share. If more and more interviews are conducted via videoconference, they suggest that this could eventually contribute to a widening of the socio-economic gap. Of course, this view could be balanced with the fact that remote options often increase accessibility to both interviews and work for rural, disabled, and other candidates.

Further work is needed to explore this topic further, in part because the participants were not representative of the general public. (As the team concedes, they were a relatively homogenous group of mostly female North American undergraduates making low stakes first impressions.) But this initial work does suggest that — if audio and video glitches can be avoided — though many of us feel that it's harder to evaluate a new acquaintance via a screen, our overall first impressions of their personality are in fact likely to be highly similar to what they would be after meeting face to face.

Read the paper in full:

Mignault, M. C., Hasagani Tissera, Cecere, J., Fargnoli-Brown, Z., & Human, L. (2024). Perceiving Others Through a Screen: Are First Impressions of Personality Accurate and Normative via Videoconferencing? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241263249

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