Research simulates real-life multitasking performance to assess potential differences between men and women. When coordinating five different tasks, men ignored the conversational task more than twice as often as women, while showing similar performance to women in all other tasks.
Multitasking, defined as the ability to perform multiple tasks simultaneously or switch between them, has become a central feature of modern life, occurring in contexts such as driving, work, household activities and even leisure. Despite the widespread stereotype that women are better at multitasking, research has shown only small and inconsistent sex differences, calling into question the existence of meaningful differences in this domain.
In light of this, with the support of the Bial Foundation, André and Diana Szameitat (from Brunel University of London and City St George's, University of London, UK, respectively) conducted a study to clarify whether sex differences in multitasking exist and to explore possible explanations for the origin of this stereotype.
In the article "Men Talk Less Than Women During Multitasking" , published in the scientific journal Psychological Research, the researchers explain that they developed a complex multitasking paradigm consisting of five tasks designed to simulate real-life scenarios, which more closely reproduces everyday demands than most previous studies.
In the first study, 41 men and 37 women performed five different tasks: a recipe-following task in a kitchen setting; a phone-number search task; a number-letter matching task; a word monitoring task in a slideshow; and a conversational task, which consisted of answering a question (e.g., "Would you rather lose all of your money and valuables or all of the pictures you have ever taken, and why?") every 20 seconds.
In the second study, to test whether this sex difference was perceptible to others, 160 observers without prior information watched videos of the participants and evaluated their performance.
Across the different tasks, men and women showed similar performance, except in the conversational task, in which men ignored the task more than twice as often as women. It is important to emphasise that, when they responded, the quality and speed of men's answers did not differ from those of women.
A possible explanation suggested by the authors is that women, on average, may engage more in communicative behaviour in social contexts. However, this hypothesis was not directly tested in this study and should be interpreted with caution. These findings are in line with evolutionary theories that propose a greater propensity for conversational behaviour among women.
When naïve observers watched participants' performance, they rated male multitaskers as being less in control of the task, performing worse, using less effort, being less alert, less happy, and enjoying the task less than women, as compared to female multitaskers.
This study showed that there are no general differences between men and women in multitasking ability, but rather a specific difference: during multitasking, men tend to ignore conversation more frequently. It also showed that this difference influences how people are evaluated by others, potentially leading to the perception of poorer performance. This helps explain why the stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men has emerged and persisted.
"Taken together, our data confirm that there are no substantial sex differences in cognitive visual-manual tasks, but that significant sex differences do exist in the ability to hold a conversation while multitasking", explains André Szameitat. This is "an ability highly salient in everyday life and, thus, could explain the development of the widespread public stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men", the researcher concludes.
Learn more about the project "142/16 - Gender differences in physiological correlates of multitasking" here .
