If You Think You’re Multitasking, You’ll Do Better
We may pride ourselves on our ability to multitask, but cognitive scientists know that strictly speaking, there’s no such thing: Most activities requiring active attention can’t be done simultaneously, and we’re really just rapidly switching between them, generally with poor results. New research shows there’s reason not to shatter our illusions: Across 32 studies, people who perceived themselves as doing two things at once (for example, listening to a lecture and taking notes) outperformed people primed to see the same activity as consisting of a single task (taking lecture notes). Those who identified as multitaskers took more and higher-quality notes in the scenario above; they also proved better at word-search puzzles, video transcriptions, and math problems.
This happened, the researchers say, because of heightened engagement: Multitasking is viewed as challenging, so people want to demonstrate their proficiency at it. “[Although] working on more than one task is detrimental to performance…separating an activity into its components and merely creating the perception of multitasking could improve people’s performance,” the researchers write. “Furthermore, if people are already engaged in multiple tasks, making them aware that they are multitasking should increase engagement and help them perform better.”
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