Why is it commonly accepted that women are better multitaskers ...?

Question

When research suggests men are actually better at multi-tasking?


And don't fly off the handle here, it's a geinuine question I am not mysogenist.

How about this, some of you tell me your research data that says women are better? I'm still trying to big up that text book of mine which said otherwise, but I don't see any of you quoting literray references.
And sure your mum could cook dinner and hoover, so could my dad he stayed at home in my house.
Look at all the men out their who play guitar and sing. There's more of them then women.

A shot part because I could not be bother to do the whole thing:
"Some people say that women are better multitaskers, but Steve Lehman, a professor in educational psychology, disagrees."

Now, give me your proof women are better?

We are going off my topic here! I do not even think one is better then the other I just wanted to know why it had become so accepted?

Answer 1

Its a myth, from what Ive seen most women cant put their mind to one thing, but if you call equally mess up several things at the same time you could call that multitasking.
Little children cant focus on one task and pull it through and we dont call them multitasking wizards.

Answer 2

While many people believe women are better multitaskers and the notion has been advanced in recent books, the differences may be more cultural than cognitive. In interviews, several top neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists said there isn't any proof of female multitasking superiority. "I don't know of any evidence of that," says Roger Gorski, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

It is possible that women multitask better than men but the evidence so far does not back that up. What the evidence says, however, is that multitasking leads to doing substandard work.

University of Michigan psychology professor David Meyer says, "the two sexes typically come out about the same, on average." Even among air-traffic controllers, the Top Guns of multitasking -- of whom nearly one-fifth are women -- researchers don't see differences, says the Federal Aviation Administration's Carol Manning.

In the research behind an article titled "Executive Control of Cognitive Processes in Task Switching" -- being published Monday in the American Psychological Association's Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance -- Rubinstein and his associates David Meyer, Ph.D., and Jeffrey Evans, Ph.D., determined that for various types of tasks, subjects lost time when they had to switch from one task to another. The work was done at the University of Michigan in 1992 and 1993.

A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (Vol. 27, No. 4) indicates that multitasking may actually be less efficient--especially for complicated or unfamiliar tasks--because it takes extra time to shift mental gears every time a person switches between the two tasks.

Using 'housework' as a means of supposedly proving that women are better multitaskers is at best disingenuous.
As a man, I have no problem with cooking several dishes at once and have them prepared at approximately the same time while letting the dishwasher, washer, dryer and refrigerator run while listening to the radio and stepping to the computer to retreive or answer email, etc.

Multitasking is like the person who is driving and talking on the cell phone at the same time: half doing two jobs.

Answer 3

When did the f****n idea of the so-called "MULTI-TASKING" become such a huge importance of skills in American society?

Yeah-right!!! As if humans were machines that could complete 5-10 job assignments all at once in a single day! Multiply that by 40 hours a week times 365 days (in a year).

It's no wonder people complain about the high levels of stress at their jobs. If they aren't doing so ~ then obviously, they're taking out their own frustrations on their next fellow co-worker who's just as highly stressed-out as the next person.

Now let me ask you this question...Where did you ever hear such a thing as anyone man or woman being "better multitaskers"? HA! I call that a joke. Even the best multitaskers I've known couldn't even handle their own personal life ~ let alone ~ their own job!

Answer 4

I have not seen anything suggesting that women are better at multi-tasking or vice versa.

Actually, my opinion of "multi-tasking" a little different than most peoples.... I'm always one to be different I guess..... My own **actual experience** with people who try to multi-task is that they have a million things going at once, but none of them gets the attention it really deserves, and most of the results they end up getting are half-assed and weak.

In my humble opinion, there's something to be said for focusing on one thing, bringing that to total fruition, doing a super job on it, then moving on to the next totally-focused thing. That's not to say that you can't have multiple projects going at once (I don't know, maybe thats whats really meant by multi-tasking) but give stuff your undivided focus and don't cut corners. A lot of these multi taskers I've seen go through a lot of activity and look busy, but don't get much of anything real accomplished

Answer 5

"It's not that women are better multi-tasker's, it's that, and yes, this has been proven and studied, men think about sex 60% of their day, really think about it, do they have time to think about anything else??"

You know that computer you used to type this? Men invented it, so I'm pretty sure they think about "something else."

It's commonly accepted that women are better multitaskers than men partly because of the (probably) feminist rhetoric circulated throughout academia and society and partly because of scientific research. You can find opposing arguments, but I'm pretty sure women have larger corpus callosi (or, if the proportion is not greater, more nerve connections in the corpus callosi). Since connections between the cerebral hemispheres allow for information exchange, multitasking appears to be better in women. How much better depends on the individual; some men are certain to be better at it than some women as well.

(The above is just educated opinion.)

Answer 6

Actually I do believe that most studies suggest the female is better adept at multitasking then her male counterparts. Males on the other hand are able to keenly focus on one task at a time. Though both sexes can do both well (for the most part), I believe nature has provided each sex with a slight edge for very important reasons. Think about it.

Answer 7

I'll bet men are better at multi-tasking technical are more business oriented things.

Women can multi task like crazy at home raising kids. I could do so many things at the same time I amazed myself:
Water the lawn, while running the dishwasher, defrosting dinner, running the dryer, washing the clothes, soaking the toilets, answering the phone, cooking dinner, feeding the baby, fogging the garage, while setting the table and cleaning the kitchen........whew.

Answer 8

Well I can only speak of my experience on the topic but the men I know are not great multi-taskers.

I am curious to know what research you are quoting, I have always heard that women are better at multi-tasking and if you remember you mom cooking, cleaning, listening to you talk about how your day went, telling dad where his socks are and answering the phone at the same time and somehow always knowing what is going on around her, at least that's my memory of childhood...

Post a link to your research, I am curious to know what the researchers say....

By the way I do these same things but at work with computers, faxes, phone systems, general ledgers, financial statements.... Its not a home verses work with high tech items thing...

Answer 9

Just think about this, could a man drive a car while putting on mascara, at the same time the're reading the newspaper, talking on the cellphone, yelling at the kids in the back seat, flipping off the car in the next lane for yelling at them to pay attention to the road, while the're changing cd's at 45mph in the left lane in rush hour traffic?

Answer 10

What research? I've never heard of any to suggest this, and again you provide to references for your statement that might suggest you're actually telling the truth.

In my own experiences I've observed anecdotal evidence to suggest you're wrong. Like Mom making turkey dinner (every dish on it's own schedue) while vacuuming, doing laundry, and making phone calls. Meanwhile, my father spending thirty minutes to set the table. Yes, this could be laziness on my father's part. But in my own life I've noticed women are better multitaskers than most men I know.

I've got no research backing me up...but neither do you. So it's your word against mine.


EDIT : "How about this, some of you tell me your research data that says women are better? "

No. It doesn't work like that. You asserted that "research suggests men are actually better at multi-tasking" So you provide the evidence. I'm not doing your work for you, when you refuse to compose a decent argument to back yourself up.

"Look at all the men out their who play guitar and sing. There's more of them then women."
Prove it. You're making unbased assumptions again. You seem to do a lot of that.

Edit 2 : "We are going off my topic here! I do not even think one is better then the other "

But you do. Your misogyny betrays itself in your use of language and in some of the other answers you give on Yahoo! Also in the disrespect you show us by expecting us to accept your wild claims as fact (Because we must be that naive), and your unwillingness to provide decent reference. We need URL links. Date of publishing. Publisher. Title. You know, so we can actually check your wild claims for ourselves. What you gave (grudgingly) doesn't make it easy for us to track these papers down.