Listener's disengagement heightens speaker's arousal during in-person self-disclosure–but not via video call

Abstract

Previous research shows that individuals exhibit overall lower engagement during video calls compared to face-to-face conversations, indicated by delayed and less frequent turn transitions. In face-to-face interactions, a lack of engagement from co-participants is known to cause physiological stress in the active speaker. Whether similar influences of listener disengagement on the speaker's emotional state take place during video calls remains unstudied. This study examined the question by measuring the emotional reactions of 64 participants (32 dyads, 128 observations) in a conversational experiment conducted in two settings: face-to-face and via video. In the experiment, participants were instructed to tell two short stories themed 'triumph over adversity' to a previously unknown recipient. The self-disclosure stories were told to a listener who, on one occasion, paid attention to the speaker and, on another occasion, conducted a mental arithmetic task while listening. To examine changes in the speakers' emotional state, we measured the participants' phasic skin conductance activity and self-reported affect during the narration. While listener disengagement had no influence on self-reported arousal, the speakers' skin conductance increased significantly when the listener was disengaged. Interestingly, this effect occurred exclusively in the face-to-face condition and not during video calls. Moreover, in the face-to-face contact, speakers reported more negative valence when disclosing to a listener with higher arithmetic task performance. Altogether, the findings indicate that speakers have a higher tolerance for the listener's disengagement in the video call setting. This outcome possibly stems from the generally lower mutual engagement allowed by the modality.