Watch out for these Zoom backgrounds. Your coworkers might see them as red flags

We might be working from home a lot more these days, but appearances still matter.

Researchers at Durham University in the U.K. studied how gender, facial expressions, and Zoom backgrounds have impacted people’s first impressions of someone. The researchers asked 167 participants to rate the trustworthiness of 72 different pictures of men and women with happy and neutral facial expressions. Various different Zoom backgrounds were chosen: home, blurred home, bookcase, plants, blank, and “novelty” (e.g. a background image of a walrus in the Arctic). Here are the key findings:

The best: The researchers found backgrounds with books or plants scored the highest for trustworthiness, followed by a blurred background and a blank wall.
The worst: The regular living room and novelty background did the least well.
The context: Happy expressions were rated as more trustworthy, as were women. However, the faces were not prescreened for attractiveness, which can have a significant impact on the level of trustworthiness.

“In the professional environment, 75% of business meetings are predicted to occur by videoconferencing by 2024,” the authors wrote. “The findings of this study therefore have extensive implications for professional organizations and the general public.”