Zoom bias: The social costs of having a ‘tinny’ sound during video conferences

Serious stuff! 

Good that my new Dell laptop comes with "Dual-array microphones" Maybe this is better.

How about an extra plugged in microphone?

"Most job candidates know to dress nicely for Zoom interviews and to arrange a professional-looking background for the camera. But a new Yale study suggests they also ought to test the quality of their microphones. 

A tinny voice caused by a cheap mic, researchers say, could sink their chances.

Through a series of experiments, the study demonstrates that tinny speech — a thin, metallic sound — during video conferences can have surprisingly deep social consequences, leading listeners to lower their judgments of a speaker’s intelligence, credibility, and romantic desirability. It also can hurt an individual’s chances of landing a job. These effects could be a potential source of unintentional bias and discrimination, given the likelihood that microphone quality is correlated with socioeconomic status, the researchers said.  ..."4

From the significance and abstract:

"Significance

In recent years, tools such as videoconferencing have shifted many conversations online, with stark auditory ramifications—such that some voices sound clear and resonant while others sound hollow or tinny, based on microphone quality and characteristics. A series of experiments shows that such differences, while clearly not reflective of the speakers themselves, nevertheless have broad and powerful consequences for social evaluation, leading listeners to make lower judgments of speakers’ intelligence, hireability, credibility, and even romantic desirability. Such effects may be potential sources of unintentional bias and discrimination, given the likelihood that microphone quality is correlated with socioeconomic status. So, before joining your next videoconference, you may want to consider how much a cheap microphone may really be costing you.

Abstract

When talking to other people, we naturally form impressions based not only on what they say but also on how they say it—e.g., how confident they sound. In modern life, however, the sounds of voices are often determined not only by intrinsic qualities (such as vocal anatomy) but also by extrinsic properties (such as videoconferencing microphone quality).

Here, we show that such superficial auditory properties can have surprisingly deep consequences for higher-level social judgments. Listeners heard short narrated passages (e.g., from job application essays) and then made various judgments about the speakers.

Critically, the recordings were modified to simulate different microphone qualities, while carefully equating listeners’ comprehension of the words. Though the manipulations carried no implications about the speakers themselves, common disfluent auditory signals (as in “tinny” speech) led to decreased judgments of intelligence, hireability, credibility, and romantic desirability.

These effects were robust across speaker gender and accent, and they occurred for both human and clearly artificial (computer-synthesized) speech. ..."

Zoom bias: The social costs of having a ‘tinny’ sound during video conferences | Yale News "A new study shows that poor audio quality in videoconferencing negatively affects listeners’ judgments of the people speaking."

Superficial auditory (dis)fluency biases higher-level social judgment (no public access)

The researchers at the Yale's Perception & Cognition Lab. Notice, they are not always on Zoom! 😊