Multitasking: productivity effects and gender differences

Thomas Buser Noemi Peter ∗

June 10, 2011

Abstract

We examine how multitasking affects performance and check whether women are indeed better
at multitasking. Furthermore, we examine whether individuals optimally choose their degree of
multitasking or whether they perform better under an externally imposed schedule. Subjects in our
experiment perform two different tasks according to three treatments: one where they perform the
tasks sequentially, one where they are forced to multitask, and one where they can freely organize
their work. Subjects who are forced to multitask perform significantly worse than those forced
to work sequentially. Surprisingly, subjects who can freely organize their own schedule also
perform significantly worse. These results suggest that scheduling is a significant determinant
of productivity and that giving workers the authority to organise their own schedule may not be
optimal. Finally, our results do not support the stereotype that women are better at multitasking.
Women suffer as much as men when forced to multitask and are actually less inclined to multitask
when being free to choose.

∗ Both authors are affiliated with the University of Amsterdam. We are grateful to Robert Dur, Hessel Oosterbeek,
Arthur Schram, Joep Sonnemans, Roel van Veldhuizen and seminar participants in Amsterdam for their comments and
suggestions. We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the University of Amsterdam through the Speerpunt Be-
havioural Economics and thank CREED (Center for Research in Experimental Economics and Political Decision-Making)
for letting us use their lab. Contact: [email protected], [email protected]. Website (Thomas Buser): buser.economists.nl.

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1 Introduction
Although multitasking is increasingly common in the modern work environment, its productivity
effects remain underexplored. Furthermore, the stereotype that women are better at multitasking is
almost universally accepted but, again, scientific evidence is missing. This paper fills these gaps
through an experimental design which allows us to answer the following research questions. First,
how does multitasking affect productivity? Second, do people perform better when they are allowed
to choose their own schedule? Third, are there indeed gender differences in multitasking ability? And
fourth, are there gender differences in the propensity to multitask?1
The first pair of questions is motivated by a practical concern: how to schedule tasks optimally. Is
sequential execution advisable, or is it more productive to alternate? Is it optimal to let workers choose
their own schedule or should companies impose one? Although it seems intuitive that scheduling
has an impact on productivity, this topic has received little attention so far in economics. The vast
literature on multiple tasks focuses instead on the pros and cons of bundling different tasks into a
single job and on what kind of tasks should be grouped together (see e.g. Holmstrom & Milgrom,
1991, Lazear & Gibbs, 2009, Schöttner, 2007, Drago & Garvey, 1998 and Lindbeck & Snower,
2000). The literature on workers’ decision making rights does not address scheduling directly either.2
The only paper we found analyzing the impact of work schedules is by Coviello et al. (2010). They
examine court cases, where a natural candidate for the measure of performance is average duration.
They find that judges who work on many cases in parallel (for presumably exogenous reasons) take
more time than judges who work sequentially to complete similar portfolios of cases. Although their
results confirm that work schedules are an important factor of productivity, their analysis is rather
specific in that it only applies to jobs where the primary measure of performance is duration.3
The second pair of research questions is motivated by the gap between popular views and scientific
evidence: best-selling books advertise that women are better at multitasking as a scientifically estab-
lished fact4 , while in reality this gender difference has not so far been shown by any peer-reviewed
paper.5 While empirical evidence is lacking, these views get support from the hunter-gatherer hypoth-
1 For the scope of the entire paper, by multitasking we mean switching back and forth between cognitive tasks. The
concepts of multitasking and task-switching are discussed in more detail in Section 2.
2 This line of research focuses on the trade-off between losing control and utilizing information from the lower levels of

hierarchy (see Lazear & Gibbs (2009), Ch. 5). When concrete examples are given, they relate to the selection of projects
or ideas that the workers works on (see for example Aghion & Tirole (1997) and Zábojník (2002)).
3 In their model, every new task takes resources away from the other active tasks which are closer to being completed,

and juggling more tasks consequently increases the average duration of task-completion.
4 See for example Pease & Pease (2001) and it’s adaptation, Why Men Can Only Do One Thing at a Time and Women

Never Stop Talking (Pease & Pease, 2003).

5 We searched extensively for peer-reviewed publications about gender differences in multitasking ability, but the

closest we could find is Criss (2006) and Havel (2004), two manuscripts available online at the National Undergraduate
Research Clearinghouse. Both examined subjects who had to perform some specified tasks while tallying keywords from
a song/story. None of them found gender differences in productivity when multitasking, but Criss (2006) found that
women were better at accuracy. Nonetheless, we do not know whether the findings can be attributed to multitasking as
none of them had a control group. The media regularly mentions research which supposedly shows that women are better

2
esis, a theoretical argument in biological anthropology. In particular, Fisher (1999) claims that the
prehistoric division of work “built” different aptitudes into the male and female brain through natural
selection. Different skills are required for hunting, performed by males, than for gathering, performed
by women. As a consequence, argues Fisher, women think “contextually”, as they synthesize many
factors into a “web of factors”, while men think linearly, focusing on a single task until it is done.
We examine the above research questions empirically by conducting an experiment in which sub-
jects are randomly allocated to different work schedules. Participants have to perform two separate
tasks (a Sudoku and a Word Search puzzle) according to one of three different treatments: one where
they perform the tasks sequentially, one where they are forced to alternate between the two tasks, and
one where they can freely organize their work. The amount of time spent on each task is identical
in each treatment. Performance differences between treatments therefore measure the productivity
effect of the different schedules. Relative performance in the third treatment, where subjects can
freely choose the degree of multitasking, is indicative on whether individuals should be free to orga-
nize their own schedule. Gender-differences in performance in the second treatment allow us to test
whether men perform worse than women when they are forced to multitask. Finally, choices in the
third treatment are used to test whether men indeed prefer a more sequential schedule than women.
Related to our paper is a literature on ‘task-switching’ in psychology (see Monsell, 2003 for a
review). In these experiments, a series of stimuli is presented to participants who have to perform a
short task on each stimulus. For example, pairs of numbers are shown and subjects have to either add
them up or to multiply them (see Rubinstein et al., 2001). From time to time, the required operation
changes. It is commonly found that there are ‘switching costs’ associated with changing tasks, i.e.
the response to the stimuli is slower after a task-switch. This literature can, however, not answer
our research questions. The tasks used are too simple to expect any advantages from multitasking
and subjects are not allowed to choose their schedule freely. Also, these experiments are not usually
incentivized. In contrast, we use two complex tasks of longer duration. Subjects can therefore expect
an advantage from alternating: they can switch when they get stuck and later look at the same problem
with a ‘fresh eye’. Indeed, our subjects do switch when they are allowed to.
Finally, none of the psychological experiments are designed to examine gender differences. Their
samples are generally too small to do so and often characterised by strong gender imbalances. Our
comparatively large and balanced sample, on the other hand, allows us to test both whether there are
gender differences in multitasking ability and in the propensity to multitask.
The paper proceeds as follows: Section 2 clarifies how do we define multitasking, the key concept
of the paper. Section 3 explains the details of the experimental design and describes the data. The
results are presented in Section 4 while their detailed discussion and the conclusions are presented in
Section 5.
at multitasking but to the best of our knowledge, none of this has been published in peer-reviewed journals.

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2 Definitions
There are several possible definitions of multitasking.6 The variant we address in our experiment
is the one that is most relevant in the workplace: people switching between multiple contingent
tasks. It is also this form of multitasking which has garnered the most interest in the popular press,
where articles about the productivity effects of multitasking are common. In our experiment, subjects
continue working on the same problem after they return from their work on the second task, similar to
an employee switching between projects or having his work at hand interrupted by another, perhaps
more urgent task. Another relevant example is when people multitask on a computer, switching back
and forth between windows or tabs.
Note that our definition of multitasking is similar to what psychologists call task-switching, but
there is an important difference between the two: contingency. When tasks are contingent, there are
potential benefits to multitasking, such as seeing an old problem with a ‘fresh eye’. In contrast, in
previous task-switching experiments subjects get a new stimulus to work on each time (e.g. they get
a new pair of numbers to add up), so only the operation remains the same, not the problem they are
working on.

3 Experimental design and data

3.1 Treatments and groups

Three treatments were applied during the experiment: Treatment Single, Treatment Multi, and Treat-
ment Choice (subjects were randomly allocated to treatments within each session and they did not
know these labels of course). In Treatment Single, subjects had to work on two tasks consecutively,
for 12 minutes each. In Treatment Multi, subjects were forced to switch between the two tasks approx-
imately every four minutes7 , resulting in the same total time constraint per task as before. Subjects
did not know how many switches would occur and the time intervals between switches varied, making
anticipation unlikely. In Treatment Choice, subjects could alternate between the two tasks by pressing
a ‘Switch’ button, subject to the same time constraint per task as before (12 minutes each). A timer
informed subjects about the remaining time for each task. When the 12 minutes for one task expired,
the screen changed automatically to the other task and the Switch button could not be used anymore.
6 Multitasking is often thought of as the performance of multiple tasks at one time, but this definition is at odds with
the findings of many psychologists and neuroscientists. Pashler (1994) reviews the related literature and concludes that
our ability to simultaneously carry out even simple cognitive operations is very limited. Using brain scanners, Dux et al.
(2006) localize a neural network which acts as a central bottleneck of information processing by precluding the selection
of response to two different tasks at the same time. Furthermore, Dux et al. (2009) show that while training can increase
the speed of information processing in this brain region, it remains true that tasks are not processed simultaneously but in
rapid succession. Simultaneity is an illusion, which occurs if the tasks are so simple that the alternations are very quick.
7 Gonzalez & Mark (2004) found that information workers spend on average 3 minutes on a task without interruption;

this average might be somewhat higher in a less fast-paced environment.

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 It is important to see that this design ensures that the same amount of time is spent on each task
in all three treatments. If we tried to resemble simultaneity, for example by splitting the screen, we
could not determine how much time subjects spend on each task, and therefore we would not know
whether performance between treatments differs due to differences in the amount of time allocated to
the two tasks or due to differences in the schedules.
As shown in Table 1, subjects were assigned to three groups. Every subject played two rounds,
the first of which was Treatment Single. In the second round, subjects in Group 1 played Treatment
Single again, subjects in Group 2 played Treatment Multi, and subjects in Group 3 played Treatment
Choice. The subjects knew from the start that there would be two rounds and that they would work on
one Sudoku puzzle and one Word Search puzzle in each. The puzzles given in Round 2 were different
from the puzzles in Round 1 (but they were the same for all subjects within rounds).

Table 1: Treatments of each group

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Round 1 Single Single Single
Round 2 Single Multi Choice

This design allows us to answer all four research questions and the fact that Group 1 plays Single
twice allows for a difference-in-differences approach. This enables us to correct for learning effects
and performance drops due to exhaustion or boredom. To examine the effect of forced multitasking
on productivity, we can compare the performance difference between Round 1 and Round 2 of Group
2 to the performance difference of Group 1. To examine the effect of a self-chosen work schedule, we
can compare the performance difference of Group 3 to the performance differences of the other two
groups. If subjects choose the optimal work schedule, we should see that the performance difference
of Group 3 is at least as high as the performance difference of the other two groups.8 Note that
subjects already experienced an example of each task in Round 1, so we can assume that subjects in
Treatment Choice switch between tasks to maximize their payoff and not due to curiosity.
To examine gender differences in multitasking ability, we follow a difference-in-difference-in-
differences approach. Note that any gender difference in performance can only come from differences
in the ability to multitask: since we compare performance in Round 2 to a subject’s own performance
in Round 1, performance differences cannot be led by differences in task proficiency. Besides, Group
1 captures any gender differences in learning or exhaustion.
Finally, to examine whether there is any gender difference in the propensity to multitask, we check
whether there is a gender difference in the number of switches in Treatment Choice. The propensity
to multitask might vary with proficiency: subjects who perform well might find switching easier or
more beneficial. Alternatively, subjects who get stuck more often may want to switch more often.
8 Since
subjects in Group 3 can choose whether or not to alternate, finding that they performed worse than the other
groups would disprove that they chose optimally.

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 Figure 1: Sudoku

To avoid attributing such effects to gender differences in multitasking, we control for performance in
Round 1.

3.2 Tasks
Our design requires tasks that are not gender-specific and for which multitasking is natural and pos-
sibly beneficial. For these reasons, we have chosen Sudoku and Word Search as tasks. Sudoku is
played over a 9x9 grid, divided into 3x3 sub-grids called “regions”. The left panel of Figure 1 il-
lustrates that a Sudoku puzzle begins with some of the grid cells already filled with numbers. The
objective of Sudoku is to fill the other empty cells with integers from 1 to 9, such that each number
appears exactly once in each row, exactly once in each column, and exactly once in each region. The
numbers given at the beginning ensure that the Sudoku puzzle has a unique solution. For example, the
unique solution to the Sudoku in Figure 1 is illustrated in the right panel. We measure performance
in the Sudoku task by the number of correctly filled cells.
When solving a Sudoku puzzle, solutions often come in waves. Multitasking can be appealing
when one is stuck: one can work on the other task and hope to see the problem from a different angle
when switching back.
The other task was to find as many words as possible in a Word Search puzzle. An example of
a Word Search puzzle is presented in the left panel of Figure 2, and its solution is presented in the
right panel. Participants had to look for the English names of European and American countries in
a 17x17 letter grid. Words could be in all directions, including diagonal and backwards. Subjects’
performance is measured by the number of correct words found.9
9 Subjects did not know in advance how many words were hidden in the puzzle, but they knew that they would be

6
 Figure 2: Word Search

As in the case of Sudoku, it is reasonable to expect subjects to switch when unable to find new
words for a while. The situation is similar to polishing a paper, when reading the same lines over and
over becomes counterproductive after a while – one changes to another task simply because a ‘fresh
eye’ is needed to recognize meaning behind the letters.

3.3 Procedures, payments, timeline

One pilot and ten regular sessions were run in the computer lab of CREED (Center for Research in Ex-
perimental Economics and Political Decision-Making) at the University of Amsterdam. Participants
were university students from various fields of study. The application procedure ensured that the two
genders were represented approximately equally in every session, but left subjects unaware that the
experiment examines gender-related issues. The experiment was conducted in English, therefore both
international and Dutch students could participate. All instructions and tasks were computerized,10
and subjects were not allowed to use any paper or take notes during the experiment.
The experiment started with an introduction that explained the rules of the two tasks and gave the
participants opportunity to practice. Subjects learned that there would be two rounds and that they
would have to play a Sudoku and a Word Search in both rounds. In each round, subjects earned 6
points for each correctly filled Sudoku cell and lost 6 points for each cell filled with a wrong number
to avoid random guessing. Subjects were not penalized for cells filled with multiple numbers.11 They
notified once all words were found.
10 The program was written in PHP (an HTML-embedded scripting language) and was displayed using the web browser

Mozilla Firefox.
11 Subjects could enter multiple numbers in one cell to denote uncertainty.

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received 9 points for each word found in Word Search. In Word Search, only entire words could be
marked and there was therefore no need to penalize random clicking. Subjects’ total points for each
round were determined as the sum of their points in Sudoku and their points in Word Search. Negative
total points were rounded up to 0. One of the two rounds was randomly selected for payment at the
end and the conversion rate was 1 euro per 11 points. In addition to this, there was a fixed show-up
fee of 7 euros. The performance payments and the conversion rate were chosen based on the results
of a pilot, such that subjects could earn approximately equal amounts on the two tasks and that the
average payment was around 23 euros. The sessions lasted for approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes.
The order of the tasks within each round was randomized, and the assignment of subjects to the
three treatments in round 2 was random as well, so that each group consisted of approximately one
third of the subjects in every session. The rules of the treatments were explained immediately before
the start of the treatment. Subjects were not aware of the fact that not everyone was playing the same
treatment as they did.
After both rounds were over, but before being informed about their payment, we elicited some
background information such as gender, age, field of study, and nationality from the subjects through
a questionnaire. Those who participated in Treatment Choice were also asked their reasons for (not)
switching.

3.4 Data
Our sample consists of 218 subjects from the ten regular sessions.12 They are 22 years old on av-
erage and the majority of them is Dutch (73 percent). Approximately half of the sample consists of
economics students (53 percent). The sample contains 11 censored observations from subjects who
solved the entire Sudoku puzzle in the second round but not in the first.13 As Section 3.1 explained,
subjects were randomly assigned to three groups. Table 2 shows the number of observations per group
and gender.14 As we can see, there are between 30 and 43 subjects per cell.
12 We only use the data from the regular sessions because some parameters were changed after the pilot.
13 In addition, 17 subjects solved the entire puzzle in the first round and 11 of them also in the second round. These 11
subjects are excluded since we do not know how their performance changed from the first to the second round. We also
dropped the six subjects who solved the puzzle only in the first round. Otherwise we would encounter a sample selection
problem: among the best performers of Round 1, we would only drop those who fall back enough in Round 2 to not solve
the entire puzzle. Inclusion in the sample is thus conditional on not having solved the entire Sudoku in Round 1. Recall
that every subject receives treatment Single in Round 1; therefore inclusion is independent of treatment.
14 The distribution of the dropped subjects is as follows: 5 from Group 1, 8 from Group 2 and 4 from Group 3.

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 Table 2: Number of observations per cell
Men Women Sample
Group 1 30 40 70
Group 2 39 31 70
Group 3 43 35 78
Total 112 106 218

Table 3: Average total points per cell

Group 1 (n=70) Group 2 (n=70) Group 3 (n=78)
Round 1 Round 2 Diff. Round 1 Round 2 Diff. Round 1 Round 2 Diff.
Men 184 188 4 186 172 -14 195 174 -22
Women 185 192 7 198 177 -21 205 198 -7
Both 185 190 6 191 174 -17 200 185 -15
Note: all numbers are rounded to the nearest integer.

4 Results

4.1 Multitasking and performance

Performance is measured as the sum of Sudoku plus-points and Word Search points.15 Table 3 shows
means per group and gender (for both rounds), and performance differences between rounds. Note
that the difference-in-differences(-in-differences) strategy takes care of any performance differences
between cells in Round 1.
Comparing the results of Group 1 and Group 2 to each other shows that the productivity effects
of multitasking are significantly negative: the difference-in-differences is -23 points (ranksum test;
p-value=0.02). Subjects who could pick their own schedule (Group 3) perform only slightly better
than those forced to multitask and score 21 points less than Group 1 (ranksum test; p-value=0.06).
The difference-in-differences in performance between men and women in Group 2 suggests that
men handle forced multitasking relatively better than women, but the difference is not significant
(ranksum test; p-value=0.84). The results of Group 3, on the other hand, suggest that women are
better at organizing their own schedule, but this difference is not significant either (ranksum test; p-
value=0.45). There are no gender differences in learning either: the performance improvement for
Group 1 subjects is the same for both genders (ranksum test; p-value=0.87). In sum, simple non-
parametric rank-sum tests do not detect any significant gender differences.
Using regression techniques, we can check whether the results hold if we take censoring and
the (non-significant) gender differences in learning into account. Table 4 shows the results of fixed
effects and first-difference censored regressions which take full advantage of the panel structure of
our data.16 As we can see, the results of the censored regressions are very close to the results of the
15 Sudoku minus-points were only used to discourage random guessing, not to measure performance.
16 Note that since there were two rounds, first-difference and fixed effects estimates are equivalent.

9
fixed effect estimates and all the previous conclusions are confirmed. The coefficients of Treatment
Multi and Treatment Choice (relative to Treatment Single) are negative and significant at the 5 percent
and the 10 percent level, respectively. The gender-specific estimates confirm that there is no gender
difference in learning (the gender dummy is insignificant). The point estimates suggest that men
adapted better to Treatment Multi and women adapted better to Treatment Choice, but none of these
gender differences is significant.

Table 4: Impact of treatments on total points

Group-specific estimates Gender-specific estimates
FE Censored FE Censored
Treatment Multi -22.76** -24.34** -28.39** -31.09**
(10.98) (11.44) (12.98) (13.75)
Multi×Male 10.90 13.37
(21.78) (22.49)
Treatment Choice -20.97* -21.19* -14.14 -15.51
(11.33) (12.02) (16.30) (17.26)
Choice×Male -11.63 -9.12
(23.11) (24.17)
Male -3.40 -5.49
(16.39) (17.17)
Nr. of obs. 218 218 218 218
Note: Robust standard errors are shown in parentheses. Significance levels: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1.

4.2 Propensity to multitask

To examine gender differences in the propensity to multitask, we use the results of Group 3. Table 5
describes the switching behavior of men and women in Treatment Choice. As we can see, 71 percent
of the subjects do actually switch when they are allowed to and the share of switchers is exactly the
same for men and for women. So contrary to the claims of Fisher (1999), men do not focus on a
single task any more than women do. Moreover, we can reject that women switch more often than
men (one-sided t-test; p-value=0.06).

Table 5: Number of switches in Treatment Choice

Men Women All
Mean 2.50 1.74 2.16
Standard deviation 2.53 1.67 2.20
Share of switchers 0.71 0.71 0.71
Number of observations 42 35 77
Note: We excluded one subject from this analysis because he misused
the ‘Switch’ button (switched multiple times within the same second).

Table 6 displays the results of two OLS regressions where the number of switches is the dependent

10
variable. In Column 1, we only control for performance in Round 1, while in Column 2 we include
session and task-order fixed effects. Contrary to our expectations, performance in Round 1 does not
influence switching behavior at all; this also implies that the impact of gender on switching is not
caused by performance differences. When task order and session fixed effects are also included, the
gender difference becomes significant at the 10 percent level. In sum, the results show that if there is
any gender difference, it is men switching more than women and not the other way around.

Table 6: Regression results on propensity to switch

Dependent variable: nr. of switches (1) (2)
Male 0.76 0.92*
(0.50) (0.53)
Points in Round 1 0.00066 0.00536
(0.0046) (0.0050)
Nr. of obs. 77 77
Task order and session FE no yes
Note: Robust standard errors are shown in parentheses.
Significance levels: *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1

5 Discussion and conclusions

Our results demonstrate that work schedules can be an important determinant of productivity. We find
that multitasking significantly lowers performance in cognitive tasks compared to a sequential exe-
cution. This suggests that the costs of switching, which include recalling the rules, details and steps
executed thus far, outweigh the benefit of a ’fresh eye’.17 Subjects who could choose the amount and
timing of their switches freely did only marginally better than those forced to switch at unanticipated
points in time and they perform significantly worse than those working under the exogenously im-
posed sequential schedule. Finally, we find no evidence that women are better at (or more attracted
to) multitasking.
The finding that subjects are unable to organize their own work optimally is not unprecedented.
For example, Ariely & Wertenbroch (2002) find that students who can set their own deadlines per-
form worse than those forced to adhere to equally spaced deadlines. Another possible explanation is
that even though subjects choose the best schedule possible, their performance takes a hit due to the
cognitive cost of planning. In a sense, subjects in Treatment Choice had to perform not two but three
cognitive tasks: solving the Sudoku, solving the Word Search, and optimizing their schedule. It is dif-
ficult to distinguish between these explanations as the number of switches is potentially endogenous
to performance.18 The hypothesis that additional cognitive effort is at the root of the performance
17 Subjects
clearly do expect a benefit from a ’fresh eye’. Of the majority who chose to switch, many explicitly stated
’looking at the problem with a fresh eye’ as the main reason.
18 Although we find no impact of Round 1 performance, the number of switches might still be endogenous with respect

11
impact is however supported by the fact that the average number of switches in Treatment Choice is
only 2.16, but subjects still fall back almost as much as subjects in Treatment Multi who were forced
to switch four times and could not anticipate the timing of the switches. Whichever explanation is
correct, the results are not in favor of self-imposed work schedules.
The results support the intuition that scheduling is an important input in the production func-
tion that deserves more attention in the economic literature. Further research is needed to determine
whether our results (which were obtained in a stylised lab setting) carry over to specific work envi-
ronments. If they do, there are important implications for job design. Although our experiment does
not provide a direct test of this, the results suggest that assigning multiple tasks to a worker may be
problematic for reasons different from those suggested by the previous literature (e.g. by Holmstrom
& Milgrom, 1991). Namely, if workers are given several tasks at once, they may hamper their own
productivity by juggling between the tasks. One way to avoid this problem is to assign the next task
only after the previous one has been finished. Another way is to prescribe a sequential execution
rather than letting workers choose their own schedule.
The finding that subjects perform worse under the self-chosen work schedule also adds a new
aspect to the debate about the centralization of decision making. The standard argument in favour
of decentralization is that workers have more information than managers and that more decision
making rights lead to an increase in motivation. Typically, loss of control is mentioned as the sole
disadvantage. Our results suggest further issues: decision-making may take away resources from a
worker’s actual tasks and workers may simply not be able to schedule their own work optimally.
As far as gender differences are concerned, we do not find any evidence for them in the ability to
multitask. Besides, the share of switchers is exactly the same for men and women and the average
number of switches is higher for men. These results contradict the claims of Fisher (1999): if men
think so much more linearly than women, why don’t they insist more on a sequential schedule? And
why is it that women do not adapt better to multitasking than men when forced to alternate? In sum,
the view that women are better at multitasking is not supported by our findings.

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