Back in January 2017, researchers identified the peptide used by viruses to communicate. According to a study published in Nature, the ‘arbitrium’ molecule enables previous generations of viruses to communicate with subsequent generations. Co-author Rotem Sorek of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, explains, “Each virus can then ‘count’ how many previous viruses have succeeded in infecting host cells and thus decide which strategy is best at any point in time.”
In other words, as Joshua A. Krisch puts it so eloquently in The Scientist[1], viruses choose whether or not to kill or infect their hosts. It is a sobering thought, particularly in the current climate of lockdown and a worldwide pandemic, thanks to Covid-19. Viruses, those microscopic parasites which teased 18th century scientists investigating the mosaic disease of tobacco plants[2], and only deigned to be categorised and photographed with the invention of the electronic microscope[3], are encoded to seek and destroy. And they do it through communication.
Meanwhile, we, Covid-19’s intended human hosts, find ourselves forced into a strange-and-not-so-Brave-New-World of lockdown. Communication has never been more vital, whether via community support groups on WhatsApp, government guidelines reinforced by the media, or internal comms bolstering a remote workforce. Arguably, the greatest challenge we face in our policed isolation lies in maintaining that most essential of communication methods: the nonverbal. The quirk of a smile, leaning in to listen more closely, raising an eyebrow, nodding in emphatic agreement – speaking without words. This lies at the core of our personal, social and business communications.
In the absence of face-to-faces, Enterprise and SMEs have been forced to rely on real-time video apps for scrums, check-ins, retrospectives, stakeholder and external client meetings, and those-never-before-so-relevant huddles. Prior to lockdown, there was a well-established culture of using video as a way to connect from the home office. But this was supported by trips off and onsite, alongside every day normality – the yoga class, cocktails with friends, supporting the local team from the stands, buying loo roll when it didn’t need to be hunted down like some rare and prized truffle.
In her recent webinar ‘’Maintaining Wellbeing and Keeping Connected in a Remote Working World’ through the Institute for Internal Communications, The Culture Builders’ director, Jane Sparrow, talked about the experiences of firms in Asia during Covid-19. Sparrow highlighted the worrying trend of workers choosing to switch off from video. While the initial couple of weeks of lockdown had workers revelling in the excitement of their mysterious, new working conditions, subsequent weeks brought about an increase in depression and a new distancing from verbal and visual communication. Instead, employees took to using emails alone as the true physical isolation of lockdown set in.
To return to the kill-or-infect molecule then, there is a viral aspect to nonverbal communication between humans which is hard to authentically replicate over video. While meetings are populated by barking dogs and children running free range in the background, there is still that ‘fourth wall’ between a single employee and the rest of their team. Factor in low bandwidth and micro-buffering, and there is a new, nervous edge to these visual conversations; in a word, awkwardness.
One explanation for this discomfort lies in the neurolinguistic concept of mirroring. Sometimes, this behaviour is subconscious – a hard-wired response[4] elicited by simple interaction. Other times, it is a deliberate attempt on our behalf to engage, agree or empathise. Professor Chris Frith, an expert in neural hermeneutics, a discipline concerning the neural basis of social interaction, explains how: “…empathic expressions of pain are not simply a reflexive response to the sight of pain in another, since they are exaggerated when the empathizer knows he or she is being observed. It seems that we want people to know that we are empathic.”[5] Frith cites facial expressions (Dimberg et al. 2000), limb movements (Kilner et al. 2003), gestures (Chartrand & Bargh 1999) and much of speech (Pickering & Garrod 2004) as further evidence of this need to root our communications in viral mimicry, and even describes these responses as ‘emotional contagion.”
But what is the effect when humans suddenly find themselves forced to interact with one another via digital environments? Many find themselves exaggerating gestures and expressions, as if in some desperate need to overcompensate for the absence of their physical presence. Could this be a person’s reaction to seeing their real-time self shrunk down to fit inside a ‘participant’ frame as they, become, quite literally, the ghost-in-the-machine? In a post Covid-19 world, will we all walk down the street, instinctively steering two metres clear of passers-by and wearing insane Joker grins?
Without the psychological cues of the reliable none-verbal, there is the very real chance that we regress into the psychologically damaging but oh-so-tempting path of rejecting video in favour of email alone – a choice that threatens to breed social distancing to a whole new level. Alongside which, how is trust authenticated? – the subject of next week’s blog.
My questions for now then — going forward, will we find ourselves regressing into email and self-imposed segregation, our interactions with each other growing ever smaller as we self-vaccinate? Or will we, Nature’s most complex communicators, find our peace with socialising, conducting business, and living our very best lives via video? Perhaps, in this age of Covid-19 and lockdown, tablets, smartphones and laptop screens are destined to evolve from the enemy into the new ‘faces’ of emotional contagion.
NEXT BLOG: Trust In A World Without
KimSaraLakin: Where science and communication collides
[1] https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/scientists-identify-a-viral-communication-system-32169
[2] https://www.livescience.com/53272-what-is-a-virus.html The early experiments of 18th century scientists Adolf Mayer, Dmitri Ivanovsky, Martinus Beijerinck and others could only suggest the existence of viruses.
[3] https://www.livescience.com/53272-what-is-a-virus.html The electron microscope, developed in 1931, enabled German scientists Ernst Ruska and Max Knoll, to photograph the first virus.
[4] In opposition to this idea that facial expressions stem from social learning and culture, Darwin found their origins in the evolution of the human species. Darwin proposed that animals who craved social interaction such as humans and chimps used facial expressions to express emotional responses to danger, aggression, welcome, etc. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/computer-science/facial-expression
