Perceived communication quality in face-to-face and computer-mediated meetings and its objective assessment using oxytocin and mimic markers

A joint project of SCILA and the Social Neuroscience Laboratory of the Voyno-Yasenetsky Krasnoyarsk State Medical University of the Russian Ministry of Health aims to study the quality of social contact and the psycho-emotional state of a person through the prism of the influence of modern communication technologies.
 
The proliferation and availability of technological solutions, videoconferencing services, and the experience of forced online transitions caused by the COVID-19 epidemic have made mediated online communication in videoconferencing format the new norm (Barrero et al., 2021). Mediated remote communication and virtual meetings have begun to dominate the lives of many educational, scientific, and work teams, replacing much of the face-to-face contact. 

However, there is a lack of studies with evidence-based, empirical, objective data to assess the effects of video meetings on the quality of communication between individuals and teams, compared to face-to-face meetings (Dennis et al., 2008; Sprecher, 2014; Nemiro, 2016; Tarr et al., 2018; Boland et al., 2021; Brucks, & Levav, 2022). Initial studies have shown that the effects of asynchrony and the altered physical environment of interaction can have implications for both the productivity and development of participants' emotional contact, and thus have both short- and long-term effects on the quality of communication and psychoemotional experience. Human communication is not only a way to transmit information, but also a complex social-psychological process that includes people's perception and understanding of each other - building a "model of the other" ("theory of mind"), forming a shared vision of the situation, building trust to each other and emotional closeness, mutual influence, including on each other's psycho-emotional state (Gonçalves et al., 2020, Stich, 2020, Feldman, 2017). Asynchrony and altered physical environment of interaction can affect the quality of social contact, and thus the emotional payoff of personal interactions and the effectiveness of business contacts.

The present study aims to close gaps in the available knowledge in the following ways. First, it will for the first time experimentally test hypotheses about the influence of communication format - mediated or direct - on the psycho-emotional state and perceived quality of participants' communication. This state and quality will be measured in a conservative way - through survey and observational methods. Second, it will explore the use of objective markers (oxytocin as a biomarker and facial expression recognition of communication participants as a digital marker) to assess psycho-emotional state and as an objective correlate of perceived quality of communication. The use of conservative methods as a basis for research will allow us to assess the reliability of objective markers, to justify and test the possibility of their use in similar scientific research and in applied solutions. Third, taking into account individual characteristics will allow us to assess their contribution to the change in objective and subjective indicators of communication quality, in particular, to the multidirectional change in oxytocin level and its possible discordance with self-reported data revealed on related tasks.

Publications: 

• Gorina Ya. V., Lopatina O. L., Mariritsa L. V. "The role of oxytocin and vasopressin in emotional memory and "reading thoughts by face": neurobiological approach and clinical aspects" (accepted in print) Annals of Clinical and Experimental Neuroscience" (accepted in press)
• Tsigeman E., Zemlyak V., Likhanov M., Papadogeorgiou K, A., and Kovas Y. AI can see you: Machiavellianism and Extraversion are reflected in eye movements (preprint)

Project News:

December 18, 2023 At the Laboratory of Social and Cognitive Informatics within the framework of the "Mirror Laboratory," a discussion on the methodology of diary studies "Experience Sampling Method (ESM)" took place. More...

December 11, 2023 The research conducted by the HSE University and the V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky Krasnoyarsk State Medical University was presented at the II All-Russian Scientific Conference 'Digitalization of Society: Transformation of Everyday Practices and Research Perspectives'. More...

November 17, 2023 Collection of experimental data of the project in St. Petersburg has been completed. 

October 27, 2023 The article "The role of oxytocin and vasopressin in emotional memory and "reading thoughts by face": neurobiological approach and clinical aspects" by Ya. V. Gorina, O. L. Lopatina, L. V. Mararitsa was accepted for publication in the journal "Annals of Clinical and Experimental Neurology". 

October 20, 2023 The project is presented at the popular science event at ICAE, St. Petersburg, Russia 

October 18, 2023 Elina Tsigeman presented the report "Communication quality in face-to-face and videoconferences: experimental testing" on an experimental study within the Mirror Labs project at the 3rd International Conference on Social Neuroscience in Ecologically Valid Conditions.

October 16, 2023 Leontiev A.V. and Mararitsa L.V. presented the results of the analysis of psychometric properties of the proactive attribution scale at the international scientific conference "Modern psychological science through the prism of the category of communication".

October 11-17, 2023, additional data collection took place in KrasnSMU within the framework of the Mirror Labs project. SCILA members Larisa Mararitsa and Elina Tsigeman conducted an experiment testing the effect of motor synchronization on changes in oxytocin levels in pairs of participants who are familiar with each other. Elina and Larisa also presented the results of the previous pilot study at the International Conference "Social Brain: Prevention and Rehabilitation of Negative Stressors" organized by the project partner university. 

September 18, 2023 An open seminar on the use of emotion recognition algorithms in psychological and social research was held at the National Research University Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg.
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September 12, 2023 the main experimental data collection at the National Research University Higher School of Economics St. Petersburg was launched.

August 20, 2023 the main experimental data collection in KrasSMU was launched. 

May 12-20, 2023, KrasSMU hosted a pilot data collection as part of the Mirror Labs project. SCILA staff members Larisa Mararitsa and Elina Tsigeman conducted an experiment testing the effect of motor synchronization on changes in participants' endogenous oxytocin levels.

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April 20, 2023 The project was reviewed by members of the Commission on Intra-University Surveys and Ethical Assessment of Empirical Research Projects of the HSE University and was found to be fully compliant with ethical standards.

On April 10, 2023 on the XXIV Yasin (April) International Scientific Conference on Economic and Social Development round table "Physiological and psycho-emotional consequences of the transition to new forms of communication" was held. During the round table the following questions were discussed:

- Characteristics that distinguish between mediated and direct communication. How has the communication process changed since the transition to online?

- Video conferencing fatigue (Zoom fatigue), attitudes toward online communication, and attachment strategies. How do personality characteristics mediate the impact of communication format on communication and the quality of social connections?

- Biochemical markers of communication quality: the role of oxytocin in social behavior. Is oxytocin a reliable marker of social behavior?

- Automatic facial expression recognition. Is it possible to assess the quality of communication by facial expression markers in the process of communication?

The discussion was attended by researchers from different fields (psychologists, neurobiologists, cognitive scientists) as well as representatives of industry and practice.

On November 7-11, 2022 SCILA team visited Social Neuroscience Laboratory of Krasnoyarsk State Medical University. During their visit the team visited numerous laboratory complexes, learned the methods of experimental research with animal models, as well as the basics of immunoassay analysis, planned in the framework of the joint project.

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