Women Are Better Than Men at Multitasking
The verdict is in: Women can do more things at once, or should that be: men can do less? A group of British researchers have finally put this long-held (but never verified) theory to the test and the results are pretty unequivocal.
According to the The Week, here was the researchers’ methodology:
They gathered 100 students—50 men and 50 women—and gave them eight minutes to perform three tasks at the same time. They all got the same tasks, which included solving simple math problems, finding restaurants on a map, and devising a strategy for finding a lost key in an imaginary field. Then, while they were juggling those assignments, the subjects received a telephone call, which they could answer or ignore. If they answered, they were asked some general knowledge questions while they continued the original tasks.
Apparently the women were undaunted by the multiple tasks and 70 percent of them outperformed their male counterparts. The men did well on the math, decent on the map test, but totally sucked at strategizing about the key.
It turns out the men didn’t use any kind of logical approach (!) but rather jumped right in with no plan.
I think even our male readers are probably having a little chuckle at that, no?
Ok, now for the rub: Multitasking is actually shown to make everyone less efficient (even us girls who are so good at it). Apparently when you focus on a single task both sides of your brain work together, but when you multitask they divide to conquer and that slows productivity. Still, my takeaway from this study? Women are more logical.
One more thing, though. Not to get all bra-burny, but why is it that this is just being looked into now? When working on the book this was something we ran into time and again: So much of the available research skews male and so much about women’s brains and bodies (and you know, hormones and skin…) remains cloaked in mystery. At least this is bound to change in coming years with so many ladies entering these fields.
Would you like to see more studies about women?
I think you should both get more bra-burny (and in fact, I would like some research done on the effect of bras on our backs and breasts, but I digress). In the year of rediscovering my inner-feminist, I re-read Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice, in which Gilligan developed a discourse to understand female psychology, in order to better understand women on their own terms instead of through a prism of male psychological patterns. It’s definitely required reading. And yes, more studies please.
Terrific work! This is the type of information that should be shared around the web. Shame on the search engines for not positioning this post higher!