Abstract
This column attempts to describe the characteristics of current cyberpsychology research in Europe. In particular, CyberEurope aims at describing the leading research groups and projects running on the other side of the Ocean.
The Advent of New Technologies
The advent of agile work, 1 also known as “smart working,” has been accellerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift in one of the fundamental aspects of our society has led to a significant change in work methods and social interaction. 2 Agile work refers to the practice of performing work activities in a nontraditional setting, such as one's own home or a remote workplace, using digital technologies to maintain communication with colleagues.
This work mode offers spatial and temporal flexibility, allowing individuals to organize their time and work environment according to their needs. On the other hand, the term “in-person work” refers to the traditional model of work conducted in an office or physical work environment, where individuals meet and interact face to face.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many organizations to implement social distancing measures and encourage, or even mandate, smart working as a temporary solution to maintain business operations. This sudden transition has led to an acceleration in the adoption of digital technologies and has highlighted both the advantages and challenges of agile work.
This shift, born from necessity, transferred to our daily post-pandemic life, and companies are now implementing different kind of policies to adopt and regulate agile work. However, it is unclear how this brand new model can foster and sustain processes that are fundamental for employees' performance and effectiveness, such as the ability to collaborate effectively with team members.
Collaboration in team working is a process that deeply relies on interpersonal synchrony—namely, the coordination of actions and physiological processes between group members—and interpersonal synchrony has been proven to be a strong predictor of group cohesion as well as group performance. 3 In this regard, Neuroscience offers several methodological approaches to measure and quantify interpersonal synchrony among individuals, from behavioural analysis to physiological data collection.
Concurrently, in scientific research, the use of techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and hyperscanning (a tool for neural correlation analysis) has opened up new possibilities for studying social interaction and neural interpersonal syncrony with a specific focus on interbrain synchrony during collaborative work activities. 4
EEG enables noninvasive recording of brain electrical activity. Hyperscanning allows for the measurement of synchrony and connectivity between the brains of multiple individuals simultaneously. It has been used to examine how minds connect and influence each other in social interaction situations.
SyncWork: The Goal of the Pproject
One of the goals of the project—“Emerging psychosocial risks in the changing world of work: identifying and developing evidence, solutions, and tools to support assessment and management in a multi-method approach” recently funded by INAIL and coordinated by the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy—is to explore neurobiological differences between agile work (or smart working) and in-person work. Specifically, the goal of SyncWork, one of the work packages of the project coordinated by the Catholic University of Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy, is to investigate whether there are significant differences in interbrain synchrony between agile work (or smart working) and in-person work during collaborative activities.
Understanding the differences in interbrain synchrony between agile work and in-person work could provide valuable insights into the underlying neural dynamics of these work modes and their influence on communication, collaboration, and work performance. Moreover, such knowledge could contribute to the development of strategies and guidelines to enhance the effectiveness of individuals involved in remote work.
Finally, this understanding could help identify potential challenges or issues associated with smart working. Therefore, the results could provide valuable information to improve the effectiveness of individuals involved in remote work and optimize collaboration and communication within virtual teams.
Research plan
A sample of 24 workers will be recruited for this study. Participants will be selected based on age (between 25 and 45 years old). Participants with known neurological or psychiatric disorders will be excluded. Participants will be informed about the study details and provide informed consent before participating. The study design will be an experimental design with two groups: the agile work group and the in-person work group. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups.
The study protocol involves two separate experimental sessions, one in-person and one remote, with a one-day interval between them, participants will perform each session in dyads. The in-person session will be conducted in the same room, while the remote session will be conducted in different rooms within the same building.
During the remote session, participants will use tablets and headphones connected to the Internet to collaborate through Microsoft Teams. This choice was made to standardize the work environment and ensure comparability between experimental conditions. Given the novelty and exploratory nature of the study and the lack of established evidence or methods to reference, we opted for these standardized forms of environment to increase comparability between experimental conditions and to minimize potential confounding factors in data collection. 5
Participants will undergo a sequential tasks to be completed in pairs. The tasks, carried out remotely and in person, will be as follows:
Study 1: Lost at Sea. 6 This task requires subjects to rank 15 objects according to their usefulness to crew members who survived a fire on board a ship. The quality of the decisions are represented by the sum of the absolute difference between the positioning of the subjects and the positioning provided by the experts (a high score indicates low decision quality). Participants will have to discuss and make collective decisions based on the information provided. This is to assess the ability to evaluate available resources and their usefulness, the ability to make rational and context-based decisions, the ability to work in a group and collaborate to reach a consensus, and the ability to manage stress and remain calm in complex situations. The simulated structure of the task provides a realistic context for assessing skills required in many spheres of life, including work contexts.
Study 2. Study 2 is an assessment based on an ecological environment during a work meeting. In this task, participants have to coordinate to reach a shared decision. They will be involved in a simulation of a working meeting, where a complex decision (i.e., financial or administrative) need to be addressed. Relevant information and resources will be provided, and participants will be asked to work together to make a decision within a set time limit of 15 minutes. The task requires effective communication and active listening skills, coordination and collaboration skills in a work context, the ability to analyse and evaluate relevant information critically, negotiation skills, and the ability to reach a consensus. The context of an ecological meeting will provide a realistic environment for decision making and co-ordination skills to emerge in a professional context.
During the execution of the collaborative tasks, EEG data will be recorded using a 64-channel EEG system. Each participant will wear an EEG cap that will record the brain's electrical activity during the execution of the collaborative tasks, and it will be positioned according to the International 10–20 System. The reference electrodes will be placed on the right mastoid (online reference) and the left mastoid (offline reference).
The average activity recorded from the two mastoids will be used to re-reference all the electrodes during signal analysis. Ag/AgCl electrodes will be used. The EEG will be acquired using a filter from 0.1 to 1,000 hertz and digitized at a sampling rate of 1,000 hertz. The electrode impedance will be kept below 5 kiloohms to ensure a good signal quality. A baseline of 2 minutes with eyes open and 2 minutes with eyes closed will be recorded for the EEG before the in-person work condition and the remote work condition.
In addition, peripheral indexes such as skin conductance level (SCL), skin conductance response (SCR), heart rate (HR), and heart rate variability (HRV) will be measured using photoplethysmography. Devices measuring ECG and SCR/SCL (data sampled at 40 hertz) will be used, with Ag/AgCl electrodes placed on the heart.
Recordings will be preceded by an accommodation period to allow the sensors to settle to baseline levels and participants to acclimate to the setup. The collected signals will be screened offline for the presence of artifacts. After artifact rejection and, if necessary, data filtering to reduce noise, interbeat interval (IBI) data will be computed from the raw heart rate data to calculate HRV metrics in the time domain. Subsequently, the entire EEG traces will undergo hyperscanning analysis to assess interbrain synchrony among participant pairs during the execution of collaborative tasks. A comparison will be made among participants and between conditions to evaluate any significant differences in both central and peripheral indexes.
Conclusions
As underlined by Prof. Claudio Barbabaranelli, coordinator of the project, “Results from this multy study design could provide insights into the social and cognitive interaction during collaborative work in both smart working and traditional work settings. The results will have significant implications for designing work modes and group dynamics, aiming to optimize working environment while promoting social interaction, and active participation.”
Additionally, the study's findings could inform the design of virtual work environments and digital platforms that facilitate social interaction and enhance the efficiency of agile work. Finally, the findings of this study will contribute to the ongoing debate on the future organization of work and the redefinition of traditional work models.