Relationship between “multitasking” and “mindfulness” with the effects of gender
Previous literature:
§In 21th century, multitasking is a necessity talent for every individual, referring to the act of attending multiple things at the same time which was a computer-like definition for human act (Cardoso- Leite, Green, & Bavelier, 2015)
§While multitasking lowers IQ, shrinks gray matter and lowers productivity, multitasking increases the gray matter and improves learning, memory, emotional control and awareness (Powel, 2016)
§Related with this results multitasking and mindfulness looks like acts opposite with opposite affects. Studies showed that individuals who works on jobs that requires high multitasking when trained in mediation and relaxation stayed on tasks longer and made fewer task switches (Levy, Wobbrock, Kaszniak, & Ostergren, 2012) which is an opposite result of multitasking.
§Women outperform men in these multi-tasking paradigms (Stoet, O’Connor, Conner, & Laws, 2013).
Aim:
§Understand if multitasking has an effect on mindfulness, with respect to gender differences.
§We hypothesized that individuals who were scored higher on multitasking showed lower scores on mindfulness, females will be less effected on this relationship.
Participants:
§There were 326 participants, 216 female and 110 male.
§The age ranged between 18 and 75 (M=31.32 SD=13.80).
§There were 273 participants who were living in a big city centre, 41 in a city, 7 in town, 1 in village and 3 in a city in abroad which means lives outside of Turkey.
§For working status, 131 of the participants were currently working, 160 were not working and 33 were retired.
§There were only 20 participants who had a mindfulness focused therapy and only 66 participants had meditation or yoga history that is mindfulness based.
Procedure:
§Online-based survey.
§15 of the data collected as hard copy.
§First participants will read and complete the consent form.
§Second they will be completing the multitasking exercise then will be answering questionnaires on mindfulness.
§After the questionnaires completed they will be answering the demographics section. Finally the debriefing form will be given to participants.
§Participants will not receive any credits or money for their participation it will be voluntarily.
Measures:
§The Multitasking Preference Inventory
14 item (α=.79)
§Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ)
15 item (α=.73)
Results:
§Results showed that there is a significant correlation between gender and mindfulness level r(317)=-.143 , p=.011, such that female participants had higher mindfulness level (M=4.09 SD=.60) than male participants (M=3.91 SD=.52)
§There was a significant correlation between the age of the participants and the mindfulness level r(312)=.327, p<.001, such that older participants had higher mindfulness level than young participants (See Table1.)
§A multiple regression analysis was conducted to see if multitasking significantly predicted dispositional mindfulness when factors and demographics were controlled.
§Results of the linear regressions showed that age and gender explained 11.9% R2 =.119 of the variance F(2,277)=18.732, p<.001 with an R2 =.119.
§Results of the linear regression showed that age, gender and multitasking explained %11.9 of the variance F(2,276)=12.443, p<.001 with an R2 =.119 which shows that there is no relationship even with controlling those variables (See Table2).
Discussion:
§There was no significant correlation or relationship between mindfulness and multitasking. Reason behind this can be multitasking overall was measured by the preference of multitasking not the multitasking ability it self.
§Also multitasking scale was originally in English and it was translated in to Turkish which can make the questions harder to understand for participants and blocks the desired outcomes.
§Moreover, the order of the different questionnaires was not randomized and the multitasking scale was at the end of the survey which can lead to fatigue or missing values.
§In future research in order to understand and investigate this relationship more clearly multitasking should measured with observation which will make the results clear since the current study focused on the individuals overall preference to multitask.
References:
Cardoso-Leite, P., Green, C. S., & Bavelier, D. (2015) On the impact of new technologies on multitasking. Developmental Review, 35, 98–112. DOI:10.1016/j.dr.2014.12.001
Powell, S. K.(2016) Mindfulness, multitasking ,and you. Professional Case Management, 21,61–62 doi:10.1097/NCM.0000000000000141
Stoet, G., O’Connor, D. B., Conner, M., & Laws, K. R. (2013). Are women better than men at multi-tasking? BMC Psychology, 1, 18. DOI:10.1186/2050–7283- 1–18
Levy, M. D., Wobbrock J. O., Kaszniak, A. W., & Ostergren, M. (2012) The effects of
mindfulness meditation training on multitasking in a high-stress information
environment. Proceedings of Graphics Interface, 45–52
