Women aren’t better multitaskers than men – they’re just doing more work
But a new study, published today in PLOS One, shows women are actually no better at multitasking than men.
The study tested whether women were better at switching between tasks and juggling multiple tasks at the same time. The results showed women’s brains are no more efficient at either of these activities than men’s.
Using robust data to challenge these sorts of myths is important, especially given women continue to be bombarded with work, family and household tasks.
No one is good at multitasking
Multitasking is the act of performing several independent tasks within a short time. It requires rapidly and frequently switching attention from one task to another, increasing the cognitive demand, compared to completing single tasks in sequence.
This study builds on an existing body of research showing human brains cannot manage multiple activities at once. Particularly when two tasks are similar, they compete to use the same part of the brain, which makes multitasking very difficult.
But human brains are good at switching between activities quickly, which makes people feel like they’re multitasking. The brain, however, is working on one project at a time.
In this new study, German researchers compared the abilities of 48 men and 48 women in how well they identified letters and numbers. In some experiments, participants were required to pay attention to two tasks at once (called concurrent multitasking), while in others they needed to switch attention between tasks (called sequential multitasking).
The researchers measured reaction time and accuracy for the multitasking experiments against a control condition (performing one task only). They found multitasking substantially affected the speed and accuracy of completing the tasks for both men and women. There was no difference between the groups.
Domestic duties
My colleagues and I recently busted another relevant myth – that women are better at seeing mess than men. We found men and women equally rated a space as messy. The reason men do less cleaning than women may lie in the fact that women are held to higher standards of cleanliness than men, rather than men’s “dirt blindness”.
