Introduction
Self-View Fixation as a Mass Psychological Experiment
Explosive Growth During COVID
In December 2019, Zoom had ten million daily users. By April 2020, that number had reached 300 million [3]. Over the first four months of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of millions of people found themselves in an unprecedented situation: for hours every day, they watched their own faces while communicating with others.
Science fiction of past generations had long predicted the advent of video calls. It was envisioned in Orwell’s 1984, in Star Trek, and across classic mid-century sci-fi literature. Yet, neither in film nor in books did anyone anticipate the specific detail we are discussing now—the conversational partner always occupied the entire screen. Not a single sci-fi author thought to place a small window with the speaker's own face in the corner of the videophone. The engineers and designers who built video conferencing interfaces added this feature for technical convenience: to ensure the camera was working, the lighting was adequate, and the user was in frame. The feature was enabled by default, and it was simply never turned off.
As a result, a purely technical solution turned into a massive, uncontrolled experiment on human attention.
Four Sources of Fatigue
In 2021, Jeremy Bailenson, a Stanford University professor and founding director of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, who has made an immense contribution to the psychology of video communication, proposed a systemic explanation for so-called "Zoom fatigue." He outlined four primary causes [4].
The first is excessive close-up eye contact: faces on the screen are situated in our "intimate space" (closer than 60 centimeters, according to Edward Hall's proxemics), creating a constant signal of high social intensity for the brain. The second is restricted mobility: the need to remain within the camera's field of view deprives us of the ability to move, gesture freely, or look away. The third is the cognitive load of nonverbal communication: on a video call, we have to nod exaggeratedly to confirm understanding and decode delayed reactions caused by audio latency (a frequent trope in comedy sketches).
The fourth cause of Zoom fatigue is observing one's own face. Bailenson formulated this as a thought experiment: imagine that throughout your entire workday, especially during meetings, someone is following you around holding a mirror [4]. It is precisely from Bailenson’s metaphor that this book, and its core concept, was born.
Observation of one’s own face as a cause of Zoom fatigue turned out to be the least studied, the least recognized by users, and yet the easiest to eliminate. To address the first three causes, we must change our working culture entirely. The fourth can essentially be eliminated with the click of a button. But even to take such a simple action, one must first notice the problem and recognize that it is more serious than it seems.
To help you measure the extent to which your attention is captured by this "digital mirror," we have included the SVF-7 rapid assessment scale at the end of Part I. It will help you evaluate your own degree of Self-View Fixation.
The Third Channel of Communication
Here is the central idea of this book.
For approximately 300,000 years—since the emergence of Homo sapiens—humans have communicated through two channels. The first is content: words, arguments, ideas. The second is the interlocutor's nonverbal cues: facial expressions, gestures, intonation, posture. The entire cognitive apparatus facilitating social interaction—from mirror neurons to the theory of mind—evolved to process exactly these two channels.
Video conferencing introduced a third channel, a third party to the communication: your own face.
Because this channel is not evolutionary anticipated, there is no established neural circuit for it, no mechanism for automatic suppression, and fundamentally no "off switch." It not only steals a portion of our limited cognitive resources but also completely redirects the focus of our consciousness. Instead of "I am communicating with this person," the mind engages in "I am observing myself communicating with this person." The individual shifts from being the subject of communication to also being its object—the one being looked at. It’s no longer just an interaction; it becomes communication layered with "post-post" and "meta-meta" awareness.
Everything described in this book is a consequence of the emergence of this third (and, as we will show, entirely superfluous) channel: evaluation anxiety, dysmorphia, exhaustion, loss of empathy, and dissociation. People react to it differently, but one way or another, it affects everyone.
Mirrors Have Always Changed Behavior
The idea that mirrors influence behavior is not new. Experimental psychology has been studying this effect for over fifty years. In 1972, Shelley Duval and Robert Wicklund formulated the Theory of Objective Self-Awareness: when a person sees their reflection, their attention shifts inward, triggering an automatic comparison between the "actual self" and the "ideal self," and the resulting discrepancy causes discomfort [5]. This model, incidentally, strongly echoes Lev Vygotsky’s ideas regarding the social origins of self-consciousness.
In 1976, Edward Diener and Mark Wallbom conducted an experiment in which students who considered cheating unethical were given the opportunity to break the rules. Without a mirror, 71% cheated. With a mirror present, only 7% did [6]. In 1979, Arthur Beaman and colleagues studied 363 children on Halloween: without a mirror, 34% of the children took extra candy from a bowl, but when a mirror was placed behind the bowl, only 9% did [7]. Subsequent studies showed that mirrors alter eating behavior, amplify or suppress emotions (depending on the context), affect self-efficacy during physical exertion, and increase the likelihood of prosocial actions [8]. Some of these experiments are still replicated in psychology departments every year for term papers and dissertations.
In all of these studies, the mirror contact lasted only minutes. Twentieth-century psychology had no data on what happens to attention and self-perception when a mirror becomes an unavoidable, hours-long part of the daily work routine. Meanwhile, the self-view on a video call is exactly that kind of mirror: "chronic"—that is, continuous and embedded in the workflow. What happens to attention, emotions, and self-perception in this state is the subject of the first part of this book.
Early Encounters with the Phenomenon
By pure coincidence, this problem entered my sphere of interest long before its explosive growth, back in the mid-2000s. I was finishing my postgraduate studies and lecturing at Moscow State University, and my life revolved around Mokhovaya Street, shifting between the faculties of journalism and psychology. Skype with video calling had just appeared (though it was still a novelty), and a partner and I decided to launch an online psychological counseling center. A format that seems mundane today was met with serious skepticism back then and failed to find demand.
However, while testing the process—for convenience, we placed the client and the therapist in adjacent rooms—we noticed a curious pattern: almost all participants looked at the window showing their own image significantly more than they looked at the psychologist. But the psychologists themselves also constantly checked their own image if the option was available.
Therapeutic contact—the most valuable resource in psychotherapy—was being undermined by a small rectangle in the corner of the screen. A therapist who is completely focused on the client during an in-person session suddenly found that on a video call, a portion of their attention was leaking into the self-view window. "Why did I make that face?" "Let's see, eyebrows drawn together... do I look empathetic enough?" Instead of purely listening to and observing the client, the therapist was observing themselves while concurrently listening to the client.
Having had this experience, when the pandemic hit a decade and a half later and hundreds of millions of people migrated to Zoom simultaneously, it was easy for me to see that a massive shift was occurring in how humans experience communication. People began experiencing widespread anxiety over physical appearances that had never bothered them before. They booked cosmetic procedures after seeing their nose from an unflattering angle. They felt drained after meetings where they barely even spoke. They were losing contact with their conversation partners, with their own bodies, and even with the feeling of being fully present in the here and now.
I started gathering research, searching for mechanisms, and systematizing observations from my clinical practice. It turned out that the scientific foundation for this phenomenon already existed—scattered across neurophysiology, clinical psychology, dermatology, and HCI (Human-Computer Interaction)—but it had not yet been synthesized. This book is an attempt to bring it all together.
Content Navigator
You do not have to read this book from the first page to the last. Depending on what you need right now, there are three entry points.
If you need to take action immediately, start with Chapter 12 (The Protocol), which contains concrete recommendations: what you can do yourself, what to suggest to your team, and what to demand from video conferencing platform developers. A rule you can apply today: when speaking, self-view is acceptable; when listening, hide it. But the safest bet is to turn it off completely and leave it off. Once you’ve put out the fires, return to the rest of the book.
If you first want to understand the mechanisms, read Part I in its entirety. It answers the question, "Why does the brain work this way?" and is written with respect to the canons of quality science communication to ensure an engaging read. It consists of three chapters: what mirrors do to humans (classic experiments), how self-view captures attention (neurobiology), and how it shifts consciousness from subject to object (vicious cycles).
If you want to understand yourself and others, turn to the chapters in Part II. Each of its seven chapters details a distinct motive for Self-View Fixation. Find yours using the internal prompts below.
Map of Internal Motives for Self-View Fixation
Read the thoughts and phrases in each block below. If any of them resonate with you, that is your chapter.
→ Chapter 4. The Controller. "If I don't constantly monitor my facial expressions and check myself, I might look angry, bored, or stupid, and that won't lead to anything good." "I feel calmer when I can see how I look."
→ Chapter 5. The Hider. "I get so exhausted by the stream of other people's faces on the screen that it's easier and more pleasant to look at my own." "My little window is the only safe place on a call with ten colleagues; it feels like I'm alone with myself."
→ Chapter 6. The Objectified. "I look worse on camera than in the mirror." "I notice flaws I never saw before: my nose, dark circles under my eyes, facial asymmetry." "During and after video calls, I feel unattractive."
→ Chapter 7. The Performer. "I try to look as professional as possible on camera: the right posture, the right expressions, the right background." "Is my smile too forced? Do my eyes look interested enough? They need to believe my enthusiasm!" "It's important for me to make a good impression, and self-view helps me monitor that." "After calls, I feel like I just performed a role at the Bolshoi Theatre."
→ Chapter 8. The Face-Saver. "I'm afraid my reaction will be inappropriate and everyone will notice." "People will see that I'm not looking at the screen; they'll think it's disrespectful and get offended. And turning the camera off is basically like not being there at all." "I monitor my facial expressions so as not to disrupt the harmony of the interaction."
→ Chapter 9. The Fascinated. "Honestly, I just like seeing myself on the screen." "Sometimes I catch myself looking at my reflection, and I don't feel anxious or ashamed—it's just pleasant." "Maybe I'm a bit narcissistic, but I'm not sure it's a problem."
→ Chapter 10. The Overwhelmed. "My eyes just naturally glue themselves to my own face, even though I don't want to look at it." "I have a hard time listening to people on video calls—my attention keeps drifting away." "I have an ADHD diagnosis (or some traits of attention deficit), and the camera makes everything worse."
Not all readers will fit neatly into just one block. Motives can combine and shift depending on the context, your level of fatigue, or who else is on the call. But generally, one motive dominates—and that is the perfect place to start reading if you want to save time.
References
[1] Giammarco, E. A., & Vernon, P. A. (2015). Interpersonal reactivity and narcissism: Self-viewing is associated with negative affect rather than reward in highly narcissistic men. Social Neuroscience, 10(4), 382–392. Later confirmed by a series of fMRI studies showing activation of the dorsal and ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) when viewing one's own face. See also: Jauk, E., et al. (2017). Self-viewing is associated with negative affect rather than reward in highly narcissistic men. Social Neuroscience, 12(5), 530–541.
[2] Malkin, C. (2015). Rethinking narcissism: The bad—and surprising good—about feeling special. Harper Wave.
[3] Zoom Video Communications. Growth from 10 million daily meeting participants in December 2019 to 300 million in April 2020 (Company data).
[4] Bailenson, J. N. (2021). Nonverbal Overload: A Theoretical Argument for the Causes of Zoom Fatigue. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 2(1).
[5] Duval, S., & Wicklund, R. A. (1972). A Theory of Objective Self-Awareness. Academic Press.
[6] Diener, E., & Wallbom, M. (1976). Effects of self-awareness on antinormative behavior. Journal of Research in Personality, 10(1), 107–111.
[7] Beaman, A. L., Klentz, B., Diener, E., & Svanum, S. (1979). Self-awareness and transgression in children: Two field studies. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(10), 1835–1846.
[8] Review of mirror experiments: effect of mirrors on eating behavior (Sentyrz & Bushman, 1998; Jami, 2016); emotional intensity (Scheier & Carver, 1977; Silvia, 2002); self-efficacy during physical exertion (Martin Ginis et al., 2003; Katula & McAuley, 2001); and prosocial behavior (Scaffidi Abbate et al., 2006). Detailed further in Chapter 1.