People were more engaged with the task, which explained their improved performance.
Believing that you are multitasking is good for your performance.
People who perceive that they are multitasking focus more and perform better.
The reason for the words ‘believe’ and ‘perceive’ is that people don’t really multitask.
In other words, we don’t do two things at once, at least not very well.
In reality, people quickly switch back and forth from one activity to another.
Psychologists have repeatedly found that real multitasking is bad for performance.
Case in point: texting and driving.
However, often we are switching between two related activities, although we think of them as one.
For example, when attending a meeting, a person might be speaking and writing notes, which is actually two activities that they are switching between.
Dr Shalena Srna, the study’s first author, said:
“Multitasking is often a matter of perception or can even be thought of as an illusion.
Regardless of whether people actually engage in a single task or multiple tasks, making them perceive this activity as multitasking is beneficial to performance.”
For the study, 162 people were given a learning and transcribing exercise.
To half the participants it was presented as a single task, to the other half it was presented as multitasking.
The results showed that, despite both groups doing the same thing, those who thought they were multitasking performed better.
A further experiment showed that people who thought they were multitasking were more engaged, which explained their improved performance.
Dr Srna said:
“In today’s society, we constantly feel like we are juggling different activities to meet the demands on our time, both at work and at home.
So it feels like multitasking is everywhere.
We find that multitasking is often a matter of perception that helps, rather than harms, engagement and performance.
Thus, when we engage in a given activity, construing it as multitasking could help us.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Srna et al., 2018).
