Women have a clear preference for multitasking, show higher self-rated multitasking abilities, & consider multitasking to be more important in everyday life than men

Gender Differences in Polychronicity. André J. Szameitat and Moska Hayati, Front. Psychol., March 20 2019.  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00597

Abstract: Polychronicity refers to a personal preference to engage in multitasking. In the current study, we investigated whether male and female participants differed in polychronicity. For this, 167 participants filled out an online questionnaire assessing polychronicity in a variety of ways, including the Multitasking Preference Inventory (MPI). Results showed that women were consistently more polychronic than men. We also found that women showed higher self-rated multitasking abilities, reported to spend more time multitasking, and considered multitasking to be more important in everyday life than men. We conclude that in our sample, which mainly consisted of University students in the United Kingdom, polychronicity shows a significant gender difference.


Introduction

Polychronicity refers to the preference for multitasking, i.e., to perform one or more tasks concurrently, in contrast to performing only one single task at a time (Poposki and Oswald, 2010). We employ an individualistic definition focussed solely on the individual preference of a person for multitasking, while explicitly leaving out cultural aspects, such as more general time-management, punctuality, or expectations about others’ preferences for multitasking. It is important to note that polychronicity refers to a personal preference, and not to actual multitasking behavior such as multitasking abilities or the amount of time spent multitasking per day (König and Waller, 2010).

Several reasons led to a considerable interest in understanding polychronicity in more detail. For instance, polychronicity is often considered to be a trait, and thus can be seen as a rather stable characteristic to describe personality (Slocombe and Bluedorn, 1999). Furthermore, it has been proposed that virtually every job nowadays requires some form of multitasking, leading to an interest in polychronicity from organizational and managerial perspectives (Bühner et al., 2006; Szameitat et al., 2015). For instance, it has been shown that polychronicity has a unique contribution in explaining job performance (Kantrowitz et al., 2012) and that it modulates the relationship between actual multitasking abilities and job performance (Sanderson et al., 2013).

Due to this relevance of polychronicity, a proper understanding of its determinants is beneficial. A number of studies aimed at identifying variables which may affect polychronicity, such as culture (Adams and van Eerde, 2010; König and Waller, 2010), personality traits (Bhattacharyya et al., 2015), or work-family interface (Korabik et al., 2016). However, we are not aware of any study which has focussed on testing for gender as a factor, i.e., the question whether men and women differ in polychronicity. While gender is occasionally reported as a variable, we are not aware of a study which actually found gender differences with respect to polychronicity.

This finding is somewhat surprising, because there is a strong and widespread belief in the general public that women are better than men at multitasking (Strobach and Woszidlo, 2015; Szameitat et al., 2015). In a previous study of us (Szameitat et al., 2015), we observed some initial evidence (unpublished data) that women might show higher polychronicity than men. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to follow up this initial observation and to test whether there is a gender difference in polychronicity, i.e., the preference to multitask.

The variety of previous studies which did not observe gender effects in polychronicity in terms of participant samples and methodology lets it seem futile to engage in a discussion for potential reasons why no gender effects were observed so far. Thus, we decided to base the current online questionnaire study on one of the most recent developments in assessing polychronicity, the Multitasking Preference Inventory (MPI). The MPI is most suited to assess individual-level polychronicity, while previous measures often also assessed cultural-level polychronicity. The MPI focusses rather strongly on a work environment, e.g., by using terms such as “tasks”, “work on projects,” and “assignments.”

To broaden the focus beyond the work environment, we complemented the MPI by a number of self-developed questions targeting everyday activities (termed “Everyday Multitasking Scenarios”; EMS). We would like to point out that we did not intend to develop a new measure for polychronicity. We merely intended to follow up the incidental observation in our previous data that the nature of the items (work focussed vs everyday activity focussed) might affect whether gender difference can be observed. For this, we generated a questionnaire with a similar structure to the MPI but which takes examples not from the work context but more from everyday life, in particular also from the life as a university student (our main sample). When formulating the questions, we made sure that it is about a preference for multitasking and not about the activity itself (e.g., by using the phrase “I like to…”).

Furthermore, we added a question which aimed at providing more in-depth information about what drives peoples’ preference for multitasking. Often, people assume (rightly or not) that multitasking saves time, i.e., one would be finished earlier or would get more work done in the same amount of time. Thus, it might be that people score high on polychronicity because they think that multitasking is more efficient although they actually may dislike multitasking. Alternatively, people may actually just enjoy multitasking while being oblivious to whether it is more efficient – or a combination of both. To our knowledge, previous definitions of polychronicity as the preference for multitasking did not define what exactly drives this preference. For instance, the MPI uses both wordings in its items, i.e., whether one prefers or likes multitasking. To control for this interpretation, we firstly included a question which asks for polychronicity by explicitly instructing participants that multitasking would not save any time. In addition, we included a direct and explicit question, i.e., “How much do you like multitasking?” These two questions should provide a good insight into the preference for multitasking in terms of liking or enjoyment.

In addition to these questions aiming to assess polychronicity, we assessed further aspects of peoples’ views on multitasking which might be useful in understanding the polychronicity data. In more detail, to test whether there is an explicit stereotype that women would prefer multitasking, we asked “How much do you think women prefer multitasking more than men?” Because polychronicity is often discussed in relation to actual multitasking behavior, we presented two questions about participants’ self-rated multitasking abilities and time spent on it (“How good do you think you are at multitasking?” and “How many hours per day do you think you spend on multitasking?”). Finally, to assess the perceived relevance of multitasking we asked “How important do you think multitasking is in everyday life?”

Taken together, the aim of the current study was to test whether gender effects in polychronicity can be observed.