Why we shout during video calls if the image gets blurry

Post Reply New Topic

At first, when the video quality deteriorated, participants reduced their arm and body movements somewhat, researchers found. However, when the quality decreased further, movement started increasing. The rate, speed and size of the gestures increased quickly at first, and then reached a certain plateau. Those participants who used gestures during the video call would also increase by up to 5 decibels when the video quality started dropping. Even when the image quality decreased so much that participants could barely see each other, they continued to use gestures and talk at a louder volume.

Trujillo says that "what this shows is that speech and gestures are integrated. People are compensating for losing out on visuals by adapting with louder speech and bigger gestures. Even when the image can barely be seen, people don't suddenly stop gesturing. It's similar to how people talk to each other on the phone: we don't see each other, and during an involved conversation we still move and gesticulate."