Mireya Acierto / Stringer / Getty Images
It's not uncommon for the modern worker to rely on phone and email to communicate with employers, colleagues, and clients. In some cases, you might even be tempted to Slack or IM the colleagues sitting right next to you rather than speak to them about something directly.
Using technology to communicate is convenient and it saves time, for sure. But there's also a dark side to our increasingly impersonal communication habits.
'We use so many different forms of communication where we don't have eye contact with people,' Sutton said. 'Once you don't have eye contact with people, even if you know them, all sorts of things happen that can just blow up because we don't have as much empathy.'
Writing in The Scientist, clinical psychologist Dr. Robert A. Lavine said that studies indicate eye contact allows people to experience 'enhanced neural synchronisation' and plays a major role in allowing us to empathise with one another.
Sutton described speaking to a student who served as an officer in Afghanistan. The student told Sutton that indirect communication habits had strained relationships between the soldiers he served with.
'He said, 'We'd go into our foxholes and we'd all be getting along fine and then we'd get on the internet and start sending nastier and nastier notes,'' Sutton said. ''We'd wake up in the morning and all hate each other.' It's almost a perfect illustration of what happens when you go from having eye contact to not having it.'
Ultimately, Sutton's student said only one solution fixed the problem.
'He said his commanding officer said, 'No more internet at night unless it's an emergency,'' Sutton said. 'And then things got better.'