Putting a stereotype to the test: The case of gender differences in multitasking costs in task-switching and dual-task situations

According to a popular stereotype, women are better at multitasking than men, but empirical evidence for gender differences in multitasking performance is mixed. Previous work has focused on specific aspects of multitasking or has not considered gender differences in abilities contributing to multit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2019-08, Vol.14 (8), p.e0220150
Main Authors: Hirsch, Patricia, Koch, Iring, Karbach, Julia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
Age differences
Biology and Life Sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive ability
Comparative analysis
Costs
Demographic aspects
Female
Gender aspects
Gender differences
Human performance
Humans
Information processing
Intelligence
Male
Medicine and Health Sciences
Memory
Memory, Short-Term - physiology
Men
Multitasking
Multitasking (Human behavior)
Multitasking Behavior - physiology
Paradigms
Psychological aspects
Psychology
Psychomotor Performance - physiology
Reaction time
Reaction Time - physiology
Reaction time task
Sex differences
Sex differences (Psychology)
Sex Factors
Short term memory
Social Sciences
Spatial memory
Stereotyping
Studies
Switching
Task Performance and Analysis
Testing
Women
Young Adult
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Summary:According to a popular stereotype, women are better at multitasking than men, but empirical evidence for gender differences in multitasking performance is mixed. Previous work has focused on specific aspects of multitasking or has not considered gender differences in abilities contributing to multitasking performance. We therefore tested gender differences (N = 96, 50% female) in sequential (i.e., task switching) and concurrent (i.e., dual tasking) multitasking, while controlling for possible gender differences in working memory, processing speed, spatial abilities, and fluid intelligence. Applying two standard experimental paradigms allowed us to test multitasking abilities across five different empirical indices (i.e., performance costs) for both reaction time (RT) and accuracy measures, respectively. Multitasking resulted in substantial performance costs across all experimental conditions without a single significant gender difference in any of these ten measures, even when controlling for gender differences in underlying cognitive abilities. Thus, our results do not confirm the widespread stereotype that women are better at multitasking than men at least in the popular sequential and concurrent multitasking settings used in the present study.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0220150