It’s important to conduct “background checks” on new employees — but a new study is taking it to a whole other level.
Have plants in the background during your work-from-home video conference? It suggests that you’re more trustworthy. At least that’s according to a new study which was published in the journal PLOS One, which analyzed how Zoom backgrounds can affect first impressions.
People who sit in front of houseplants or bookcases are perceived as the most trustworthy, according to researchers, while those who use cheesy novelty backdrops such as beaches or animals are seen as the least dependable.
“With videoconferencing, most of what everyone else sees — the majority of your screen — is taken up with your background,” said study co-author Paddy Ross, an associate psychology professor at Durham University in UK, told New Scientist. “So you no longer have to just worry about how you look and how you’re presenting yourself to other people, but also what you have all around you.”
This is particularly crucial in the post-pandemic era, where hybrid work schedules mean that meetings are increasingly conducted via digital platforms.
To determine what certain backgrounds say about Zoom-ers, Ross and his colleagues amassed 72 photos of 36 white adults from a photo compendium of human faces assembled for researchers.
The subjects were divided evenly into 18 men and 18 women who were either smiling or sporting a neutral expression.
The researchers then overlaid the faces over six different backgrounds — a living room, a blurred living room, a bookcase, a cupboard lined with potted plants, a blank wall and a walrus in front of an iceberg — and framed each to resemble the view during a typical Zoom call.
Finally, the scientists asked 167 participants to rate the people based on how trustworthy and competent they appeared on a scale from 1 to 7.
Most favorably perceived according to these categories were the faces with plants and bookshelves in the background, while those perceived least favorably were those set against the living room and the walrus.
Meanwhile, the blurred living room and blank wall ranked somewhere in between on the first impression scale.
As for expressions, the smiling visages were deemed more competent and trustworthy than the neutral ones, which Ross chalked up to the fact that smiling is seen as synonymous with self-confidence.
On another note, women overwhelmingly gave better first impressions — although Ross says more research is needed to shed light on this digital gender divide.
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