TAILIEUCHUNG - Are women better than men at multi-tasking

There seems to be a common belief that women are better in multi-tasking than men, but there is practically no scientific research on this topic. Here, we tested whether women have better multi-tasking skills than men. | Stoet et al. BMC Psychology 2013 1 18 http 2050-7283 1 18 BMC Psychology RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Are women better than men at multi-tasking Gijsbert Stoet 1 Daryl B O Connor2 Mark Conner2 and Keith R Laws3 Abstract Background There seems to be a common belief that women are better in multi-tasking than men but there is practically no scientific research on this topic. Here we tested whether women have better multi-tasking skills than men. Methods In Experiment 1 we compared performance of 120 women and 120 men in a computer-based task-switching paradigm. In Experiment 2 we compared a different group of 47 women and 47 men on paper-and-pencil multi-tasking tests. Results In Experiment 1 both men and women performed more slowly when two tasks were rapidly interleaved than when the two tasks were performed separately. Importantly this slow down was significantly larger in the male participants Cohen s d . In an everyday multi-tasking scenario Experiment 2 men and women did not differ significantly at solving simple arithmetic problems searching for restaurants on a map or answering general knowledge questions on the phone but women were significantly better at devising strategies for locating a lost key Cohen s d . Conclusions Women outperform men in these multi-tasking paradigms but the near lack of empirical studies on gender differences in multitasking should caution against making strong generalisations. Instead we hope that other researchers will aim to replicate and elaborate on our findings. Background In the current study we address the question whether women are better multi-taskers than men. The idea that women are better multi-taskers than men is commonly held by lay people for a review see Mantyla 2013 . While the empirical evidence for women outperforming men in multi-tasking has been sparse researchers have shown that women are involved more in multi-tasking than men for example in house-hold tasks Offer and Schneider

• Tâm lý học
• Multi tasking than men
• Paper and pencil
• Arithmetic problems
• Multi tasking scenarios
• Multi tasking paradigms