The effects of monochronicity and polychronicity on multitasking strategy and performance

Time use is an important consideration in designing task environments for cross-cultural audiences. When performing multiple tasks, monochrons use a serial approach; while polychrons do many tasks at once. Several studies have indicated that polychrons may perform better than monochrons in multitasking situations; however there is a lack of experimental validation. In this thesis, monochronicity/polychronicity (M/P) was evaluated using an online survey, a dual-process control task, cognitive ability and style test, and a dual control task with different task priorities and difficulties. Results indicated that people from western cultures, managers, those with higher-education and upper middle-aged people were generally more polychronic. In addition, monochrons and polychrons had same cognitive abilities, except for attention. Monochrons showed better selective attention abilities than polychrons. This indicated that monochrons concentrated on the more important task; however polychrons divided their attention among the different tasks. Two dual-task experiments confirmed that monochrons and polychrons did use different attention strategies in dual tasks. In general, polychrons switched more often between tasks than monochrons and achieved a better total performance. Moreover, results indicated significant effects of task priority, difficulty and interaction on eye movement patterns, control strategies and performance. Monochrons were influenced by priority more than polychrons, especially in relation to difficult tasks. Monochrons spent significantly more time on the primary (more important) task. However, polychrons distributed their time more evenly on both tasks. Polychrons achieved better performance than monochrons on the secondary (less important) task but had similar performance on the primary task. The results from this research can be useful in designing serial/parallel multitasks, task scheduling and personnel selection