People love remote work. Their mental health may not

“Our own experiences, sometimes living alone and working from home, primed us to think there could be negative mental health consequences for some segment of the population,” said Emma Harrington, an economist at the University of Virginia and one of the study’s authors.

What surprised her more was who failed to benefit. Remote work is often framed as a win for people with families, since it frees up time otherwise lost to commuting, but the data didn’t bear that out.

“It was a little bit more surprising that for people with partners and children at home, we didn’t see large positive impacts, despite anecdotal evidence that people really value remote work,” Harrington, who is the the author of the upcoming book In Person, said. The effects were more pronounced for people living alone, but no group saw a clear mental health upside from working remotely.

Why the small stuff matters so much

Harrington points to separate research to explain why a missed hallway chat or a coffee run isn’t as trivial as it seems.

“There’s some really interesting research in neuroscience showing that when people are sitting in the same room, they’ll have mirroring in their body language,” Harrington said. “What’s more stunning is that the same kind of mirroring happens in people’s brains, and that’s associated with feelings of empathy and warmth toward other people. Those can be triggered by pretty small interactions.”