Turn your self-view off: A CC psychology professor on potential long-term impacts of Zoom
Plus, how other liberal arts colleges hope to bring students back for spring
Good morning, and happy Wednesday. On this pre-pandemic date in 2017, the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College was hosting a silent disco dance party. (In these weird pandemic times, silent discos via video conference are a thing, apparently.)
Today, one Colorado College professor explains the research she’s doing surrounding Zoom and “self-view,” and its potential implications. We also recap what other liberal arts colleges are saying about their plans for the spring semester.
➡️ICYMI: On Monday, our resident microbiologist Phoebe Lostroh gave her weekly forecast for El Paso County. She also explained how she develops her COVID-19 prediction models.
✉️In Your Inbox:
Colorado College has named L. Song Richardson as its next president, who the college describes as “a legal scholar, educator, lawyer, and expert on implicit racial and gender bias.” You can watch the introduction video here.
The student-run Collective for Antiracism and Liberation brought the school’s contract with the Colorado Springs Police Department into question this semester and called for elimination of the Campus Resource Officer position. Yesterday, the college announced via email that it will launch a “Campus Safety Oversight Committee” next semester, and it will extend its agreement with the Colorado Springs Police Department regarding the position of a Campus Resource Officer for two years, starting in January 2021. (Be on the lookout for an article in The Catalyst about this after break.)
Students who did not share plans to remain on campus over winter break in the recent Spring Survey will have their Gold Card access turned off Dec. 18. Students whose plans have changed and now need to remain on campus should reach out to their Residential Life Coordinator before Dec. 17.
📭SCHEDULING: For the last two weeks of December, The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project will only publish our Monday forecasts so our team can take a break for the holidays. We’ll be back with our regular twice-weekly newsletters starting the first week of January!
‘Chronically accompanied by our own image’: How one CC professor is investigating potential impacts of Zooming all day long
Several college students stood alone in a dressing room, looking at themselves in a mirror. Some were wearing swimsuits. Others wore sweaters. Thinking they were participating in a study about “emotions and consumer behavior,” an audio recording asked the students over a set of headphones to answer a series of math problems. Then, they changed back into their original clothes and left the dressing room.
Tomi-Ann Roberts, a Colorado College professor and chair of the psychology department, helped conduct this study in the late ’90s. She found that controlling for all other variables — including the participant’s ACT or SAT math scores — the women sitting in swimsuits alone in the dressing room performed worse on average on the problem set than their counterparts who wore sweaters. For male participants, however, the researchers found a nonsignificant trend that men in swimsuits performed better on the math test than men in sweaters.
The findings of this experiment prompted further psychological science research about how female-identifying people internalize their own objectification. Deemed “objectification theory,” Roberts said self-objectification can lead to disruptions of consciousness and content retention.
When the pandemic hit and forced professors nationwide to move their classes online — some using platforms such as Zoom — Roberts couldn’t help but wonder about how people constantly seeing themselves on screen would affect their learning.
“I was noticing that when I was participating in these Zoom meetings, I would be chronically kind of checking my own square and seeing how it is that I appear,” Roberts told The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project.
Checking your appearance during a Zoom meeting seems to be a common trend, and some experts are beginning to discuss its potential effects. A recent Washington Post article wrote that plastic surgeons have anecdotally reported an “unprecedented” number of requests for procedures during the pandemic. One source told a journalist that she opted for Botox because wrinkles on her face bothered her more over video than they did in real life.
With her background in objectification theory, Roberts decided to design an experiment to research how the online video platform was impacting students in ways some may not notice.
“I was just really struck by the idea that this was a kind of literal self-objectification,” Roberts said. “We are now in our lives chronically accompanied by our own image of ourselves.”
During the summer, Roberts collaborated with Jamie Goldenberg, a professor at the University of South Florida, to create a study that researched the effects of Zoom self-view on a person’s content retention. They started by asking some Colorado College faculty who were teaching summer courses to participate in her study, and some students gave their informed consent to participate in the study as well.
The study asked students to complete a pre-survey questionnaire about their demographics and their tendency to “self-objectify.” Roberts said they determined this measure by asking questions like, how much do I check myself in mirrors as I walk past them? and how much shame do I have about the fact that my appearance doesn’t meet cultural standards of beauty and attractiveness?
Then, Roberts asked professors to lead two different discussions of the same length. While all students will complete both conditions, the study randomly assigned which condition people experienced first.
One condition was to use Zoom as normal, in gallery view where the students can see themselves in their squares. The other condition asked students to mouse over their square, click the three dots in the top right-hand corner, and select “hide self-view.” Roberts emphasized that hiding self-view is not the same as turning your video off.
After each discussion, students completed a questionnaire about class comprehension. The questions asked about how much a student got into the flow of discussion, and how much information they thought they would retain, Roberts said.
Roberts and her colleague predicted that individuals who had a higher tendency to self-objectify would find it harder to absorb a class discussion when they could see themselves on screen. Results from the experiment are confirming this prediction so far, the professor said, but the study has gone far from smoothly.
Roberts said she’s had a difficult time getting people to cooperate with instructions because they didn’t understand them. Some people did not realize “hide self-view” was an option and confused it with turning off their video, Roberts said.
She also noted that some people are uncomfortable turning their self-view off in the first place. When one of her students asked how the teacher would know if she had a question, Roberts reminded them that like in a physical classroom, a professor will still see if someone raises their hand, even if they can’t see it themselves.
“It is now the case that we are such cyborgs that we don’t know if we’ve raised our hand if we don’t see ourselves raising our hand,” Roberts said. “The philosophical questions ... are outpacing my capacity to operationalize this into a psych science study,” she added.
Even in the early days of the pandemic, some people predicted that remote work was here to stay. In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees they could work from home “forever,” if they wanted to. Yet Roberts’ research might be revealing that the trend of shifting workplaces and classrooms online may not come without significant effects.
“For certain people, people’s whose appearance is more likely to be abjected and scrutinized — people of color, women, people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds — this chronic self-view, this chronic reminder of what you look like to everyone else, is to me the prime example of stereotype threat,” Roberts said. “So I’m just very, very confused by why Zoom would have set it up this way.”
How our liberal arts peers are readying for a Socially-Distant Spring
As Colorado College students finish their Block 4 finals and head into the holidays, some have already begun to brace themselves for another pandemic semester.
🗣Reminder: Colorado College will allow all students currently living on campus to stay on campus. Students in the following groups may also return to campus and will get swabbed upon arrival: seniors with housing assignments; first-year students whom the college sent home at the end of Block 1; first-year and new transfer students who took classes remotely this fall; new Fall-Semester-Away, winter-start, and transfer students; NCAA student-athletes not already on or near campus; and international students. Instead of the usual spring break, there will be a normal Block Break.
Wondering how CC compares to its peers in planning for the spring semester? We’ve got you covered. Here’s how some liberal arts schools are preparing:
Amherst College will bring about 1,200 students to campus this spring. This includes: first-years, sophomores whose home situations would impede their academic progress, juniors, seniors, and transfer students. The college will test all students three times per week during the semester, and the students are not allowed to leave campus unless they obtain permission from the Office of Student Affairs. Classes begin Feb. 3, and spring break is canceled.
Students at the Claremont Colleges will not return to campus until March, at the earliest. Spring Break is scheduled for March 8–12, and if allowed, students may come to campus after that break. If students return to campus, all in-person classes will take place outside and will be capped at 25% of their usual capacity. Students will only be allowed to eat outside or in their rooms.
Pitzer College is offering an optional “3+1 enrollment pathway” for the spring and summer. Under this plan, students can take three courses during the spring and one during the summer. (The summer class will be online.) Tuition for this plan is the same as the regular spring semester rate.
Classes at Ithaca College will be remote for two weeks at the beginning of the semester before expanding to include in-person and hybrid formats for the remainder of the spring. The college replaced spring break with five “mini-breaks,” which are single days with no classes during the semester, and students should remain on campus during the breaks. The college will follow all New York state quarantine guidelines for out-of-state students when they return to campus.
Lafayette College is allowing any student who wants to return to campus to do so this spring, and students who stay home will receive a 10% discount on tuition. January interim programs are canceled and spring semester courses will begin Jan. 25. Professors can choose if they want to teach their courses with remote or in-person formats.
All students returning to live on campus at Rollins College for the spring semester must quarantine for 14 days at home prior to their arrival, and then they will undergo COVID-19 testing within five to 10 days. The college will offer intersession courses remotely in January, and Maymester will run as scheduled. The college replaced spring break with two “no-class days.”
St. Lawrence University is requiring all students returning to campus to take a PCR nasal test three days before they arrive, and to provide negative results before they move in. The university will then test students upon arrival and test them a second time four days later, all while students will quarantine in their rooms until they have received negative results. Students must also read and sign the “Laurentian Pact,” with safety expectations for the semester, before they are allowed on campus. Mid-semester and spring breaks are canceled.
Williams College will begin spring semester classes on Feb. 17, and spring break is eliminated. The college will add some “health days” to the calendar instead. Meals will only be available to-go, and some dining facilities will offer advance ordering. Williams announced in October that student-athletes will not participate in winter varsity athletic competition. A decision about the format of commencement will be announced later.
About the CC COVID-19 Reporting Project
The CC COVID-19 Reporting Project is created by Colorado College student journalists Miriam Brown, Isabel Hicks, Esteban Candelaria, and Lorea Zabaleta, in partnership with The Catalyst, Colorado College’s student newspaper. Work by Phoebe Lostroh, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology at CC and National Science Foundation Program Director in Genetic Mechanisms, Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, will appear every Monday.
The project seeks to provide frequent updates about CC and other higher education institutions during the pandemic by providing original reporting, analysis, interviews with campus leaders, and context about what state and national headlines mean for the CC community.
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