You're being judged on the quality of your microphone | CBC News

CBC - 20/04
A new Yale psychology study says the audio quality you have on video calls can affect how others perceive you — especially in snap-judgement scenarios like job interviews and dating.

evEn IF yOU cAN UNdersTanD eVEry OnE oF tHese WORdS, HOW thiS SEntENce lOOks, MaTTeRs.  

Beyond being an affront to CBC News style, a sentence like the one above also makes the reader work a little harder, affecting a concept called fluency. 

"Fluency is just the ease with which we process information," says Brian Scholl, a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Yale University. 

Scholl's latest research adds to the knowledge that fluency also affects how we judge what we hear, and was inspired by the way many of us communicate these days: video calls. 

Hire, desire, liar 

In a series of experiments, thousands of people across ages and demographics listened to short audio recordings, and were asked to make judgments afterward. 

"Critically, half of the subjects heard a very rich, resonant recording," Scholl explained, while the other group heard the same recording, "but filtered so that it sounded like it was coming through a sort of tinny microphone....
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