Habitual Multitaskers Do It Badly

iandoh writes "According to a group of Stanford researchers, people who frequently multitask don't pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time. In other words, multitaskers are bad at multitasking. The research team is also studying how to design computer voices for cars that result in safer driving." Reader AliasMarlowe adds "The comparison involved multitasking with a number of attention or context related tests. For the study, multitasking was defined as consuming multiple media sources at once — gaming, TV, IM, email, etc. Interestingly, the habitual multitaskers were much worse at multitasking than the single taskers in these relatively straightforward tests. In self-assessment the multitaskers considered themselves good at it and the single taskers considered themselves bad at it. An extreme case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, perhaps, with consequences for business and society."

Comments

People in general

[ari_j]

People in general suck at multitasking. The people who arrogantly but mistakenly believe they can multitask well only believe so out of a lack of self-awareness. People who are more self-aware and able to recognize that they are not good at multitasking will have a tendency, on average, to be better at organizing their thoughts and therefore better at preventing their multiple tasks from interfering with each other to the same extent that the arrogant, un-self-aware person experiences. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect mentioned in the summary. Nothing to see here.