Along those lines, I discovered (by accident) that soft music has a similar effect. It’s not something you necessarily want to play when people are trying to focus, but when people are congregating for a meeting, it puts them at ease. There is dramatically more small talk. And when you turn off the music (eg, to start the meeting), it serves as an audible cue that something is happening and that people should pay attention.

This all jives with my personal experience, as a male. I can't help but read this article and think about evolution. Specifically, that men were more likely to work together "side by side" toward a common goal (hunting an animal, etc) while the women stayed back at the camp and tended the fire, children, cooking, etc and were more likely to face each other to converse.

Deborah Tannen in particular has done quite a bit of research around the topic of gender and conversation. https://mtprof.msun.edu/Fall1995/shellen.html

This seems like great advice, when I think back on my own experience it lines up. I’ll try to do this more!