Over the past few years, you've likely started taking meetings over Zoom or Google Hangouts, and you've probably noticed your eyes wandering around. Exactly what you should be looking at is a bit of a mystery. Should your eyes linger off-screen to avoid awkward eye contact? Should you be looking directly at your monitor so you can view the other person on the line?
Well, it turns out what you should be doing is looking directly into your webcam.
A new study by researchers at Stanford University and Sweden's University of Gothenburg looked into some best practices for video conferencing and livestreaming, assuming a user wants to seem likable and trustworthy (and who doesn't?).
The study, titled Impression Formation From Video Conference Screenshots: The Role of Gaze, Camera Distance, and Angle, took those exact attributes into consideration: where one's eyes gaze during a video call, the distance they are from their camera, and even the camera angle, to determine which elicited the most comfortable response from viewers who were asked to rate images of webcam users for various attributes on a five-point scale.
