Table 1.
Participant demographics.
Table 2.
Means of the self-rated own multitasking (MT) abilities as assessed by the question “How good do you think you are at multitasking?”.
Fig 1.
Self-rated own multitasking (MT) abilities as assessed by the question “How good do you think you are at multitasking?”.
Scale ranged from 0 (“extremely bad”) to 6 (“excellent”). In total (category ‘All’) 486 participants (274 females; 212 males) answered this question. Results of one-sample t-tests testing whether the mean rating differed significantly from a rating of 3 (“average”; centre of scale) are shown as asterisks above each bar (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Results of independent samples t-tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05). Error bars denote standard error of the mean (SEM).
Table 3.
Means of the self-rated hours spent multitasking (MT) per day.
Fig 2.
Means of the self-rated hours spent multitasking (MT) per day.
In total (category ‘All’) 486 participants (274 females; 212 males) answered this question. Results of independent samples t-tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05; ** p < .01). Error bars denote SEM.
Table 4.
Proportion “Yes”-responses (in percent, %) in response to the question “Do you think there are gender differences in multitasking?”.
Dichotomic scale with Yes and No as answer options.
Fig 3.
Proportion “Yes”-responses (in percent, %) in response to the question “Do you think there are gender differences in multitasking?”.
Dichotomic scale with Yes and No as answer options. In total (category ‘All’) 486 participants (274 females; 212 males) answered this question. Results of χ² tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05). Error bars denote standard error.
Table 5.
Proportion (in percent, %) of participants choosing women in response to the question “Who do you think is better at multitasking?”.
Fig 4.
Proportion (in percent, %) of participants choosing women in response to the question “Who do you think is better at multitasking?”.
Dichotomic scale with Men and Women as answer options. In total (category ‘All’) 288 participants (160 females; 128 males) answered this question. Results of χ² tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). This question was only presented to participants who believe in gender differences (Question 3). Error bars denote standard error.
Table 6.
Summarized answers to the open comment question “Why do you think they are better?”.
Table 7.
Proportion (in percent, %) of participants answering “Yes” in response to the question “Do you think women are better due to childcare?”.
Fig 5.
Proportion (in percent, %) of participants answering “Yes” in response to the question “Do you think women are better due to childcare? For example having to attend to children’s needs as well as other household tasks.”.
Dichotomic scale with Yes and No as answer options. In total (category ‘All’) 199 participants (136 females; 63 males) answered this question. Because the Netherlands’ sample showed a very strong and opposite pattern as compared to all other samples, we present a further category which subsumes all participants across all countries except for the Netherlands sample (“All (without Netherlands)”). Results of χ² tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Error bars denote standard error.
Table 8.
Proportion (in percent, %) of participants answering “Yes” in response to the question “Do you think women who don’t have children are also better at multitasking (e.g. because they have a genetic / evolutionary advantage)?”.
Table 9.
Means of the rated size of the gender differences as assessed by the question “How large do you think the [gender] difference is?”.
Fig 6.
Means of the rated size of the gender differences as assessed by the question “How large do you think the [gender] difference is?”.
Scale ranged from 0 (“very little”) to 4 (“significant”). In total (category ALL) 238 participants (136 females; 102 males) answered this question. Results of one-sample t-tests testing whether the mean rating differed significantly from a rating of 1 (“Little difference”) are shown as asterisks above each bar (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Error bars denote SEM.
Table 10.
Means of the rated significance of the gender differences as assessed by the question “How significant/relevant for everyday life do you think the [gender] difference is?”.
Fig 7.
Means of the rated significance of the gender differences as assessed by the question “How significant/relevant for everyday life do you think the [gender] difference is?”.
Scale ranged from 0 (“not relevant”) to 3 (“very relevant”). In total (category ‘All’) 238 participants (136 females; 102 males) answered this question. Results of one-sample t-tests testing whether the mean rating differed significantly from a rating of 1 (“slightly relevant”) are shown as asterisks above each bar (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Error bars denote SEM.
Table 11.
Means of the answers to the question “Who do you think multitasks more?”.
Fig 8.
Means of the answers to the question “Who do you think multitasks more?”.
Possible answers were “Men” (recoded as -1), “Same” (recoded as 0) and “Women” (recoded as 1). Thus, a positive value reflects that participants think women multitask more. Results of one-sample t-tests testing whether the mean rating differed significantly from a rating of 0 (“same”) are shown as asterisks above each individual bar (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Results of independent samples t-tests testing for gender differences are shown above each pair of bars of a country (* p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001). Error bars denote SEM. For further details, see Fig 1.
Fig 9.
Means of the answers to the question “How far do you agree with the following being examples of multitasking?”.
Possible answers ranged from “Strongly disagree” (recoded as -3) to “Strongly agree” (recoded as +3). SEM = standard error of the mean.
Fig 10.
Means of the answers to the question “What do you think, how much multitasking is required in the following occupations?”.
Possible answers ranged from “Not at all” (recoded as -3) to “A great deal” (recoded as +3). SEM = standard error of the mean.