Meeting science grows as psychologists study archived virtual data

Organizational and social psychologists have turned meeting science into a growing specialization, a shift driven by the availability of data from archived virtual sessions. Liana Kreamer, an organizational psychologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, coauthored a review covering more than 30 years of research in this area, published in the 2026 Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. Kreamer defines the subject as gatherings of people with some goal or structure to the event. This distinction separates formal meetings from casual interactions in caves, fields, market squares, or town halls, where people historically came together to share ideas or get on the same page. The new specialization aims to determine what these meetings accomplish and how to make them as worthwhile as possible. For decades, meetings were not a particularly accessible subject of study. However, the field now provides insight into how people fulfill basic human needs to connect, communicate, and cooperate. The growing body of research comes at a time when meetings dominate professional schedules. Close to 1 billion meetings take place each day around the world. CEOs spend nearly three-quarters of their workdays in these sessions, and planning for and spearheading meetings consumes the majority of managers' time. In much of the industrialized world, these gatherings serve as both the metronomes and menaces of working life.