忙碌的心理学：目标激活造成的多任务处理
The Psychology of Getting Busy: Multitasking as a Consequence of Goal Activation
——原载《实验心理学杂志：总论》2022年第151卷第1期——
<Journal of Experimental Psychology: General>, 2022, 151(1)
【摘要】随着人类多任务处理的不断普及，了解人们为什么要同时执行任务或在未完成的任务之间切换是至关重要的。在本文中，我们提出当人们有多个主动目标时会发生多任务行为；它们的数量越多，多任务处理的程度就越大。当一个目标的重要性超过其他目标时，当前考虑的目标数量会减少，从而降低多任务处理的程度。我们在一系列六项研究中测试了这些假设，在这些研究中，我们操纵了目标激活或目标重要性，并调查了这如何影响多任务处理的程度。结果表明，参与者积极参与的积极目标越多，他们就越有可能计划进行多任务处理（研究 1 和 5），并且他们在任务之间切换的频率越高（研究 2）。他们还在假设比低中断条件下激活更多目标的高中断条件下多任务处理（研究 3）。此外，我们证明了通过减少同时考虑的目标的数量来显着降低多任务处理的程度，或者通过增加目标之一的相对重要性（研究 4）或通过心理对比诱导对目标之一的更大承诺程序（研究 5）。在学术背景下进行的研究 6 还表明，与班级相关的目标的重要性负面预测了班级中的媒体多任务处理。因此，结果表明，目标激活是解释人们为什么要多任务的潜在机制。【关键词】多任务、多目标、任务切换、目标激活、目标重要性
[Abstract] With the constantly increasing popularity of human multitasking, it is crucial to know why people engage in simultaneous task performance or switch between unfinished tasks. In the present article, we propose that multitasking behavior occurs when people have multiple active goals; the greater their number, the greater the degree of multitasking. The number of currently considered goals is reduced where one goal's significance overrides the others, reducing the degree of multitasking. We tested these hypotheses in a series of six studies in which we manipulated either goal activation or goal importance and investigated how this affected the degree of multitasking. The results showed that the more active goals participants actively entertained, the more likely they were to plan to engage in multitasking (Studies 1 and 5), and the more often they switched between tasks (Study 2). They also multitasked more under high interruption condition assumed to activate more goals than low interruption condition (Study 3). Further, we demonstrated that the degree of multitasking was significantly decreased by reducing the number of simultaneously considered goals, either via increasing the relative importance of one of the goals (Study 4) or via inducing greater commitment to one of the goals through a mental contrasting procedure (Study 5). Study 6, carried out in an academic context, additionally showed that the importance of a class-related goal negatively predicted media multitasking in class. The results thus show that goal activation is the underlying mechanism that explains why people multitask.[Key words] multitasking, multiple goals, task switching, goal activation, goal importance
本中文解析是对于论文《忙碌的心理学：目标激活造成的多任务处理》（The Psychology of Getting Busy: Multitasking as a Consequence of Goal Activation）的论文解析，该论文发表于《实验心理学杂志：总论（JEPG）》2022年第151卷第1期上，作者为波兰雅盖隆大学的
Ewa Szumowska和美国马里兰大学帕克分校的
Arie W. Kruglanski。
（中文解析请阅《华人心理健康报》2022年7月25日PDF版）
论文原文：Szumowska, E., & Kruglanski, A. W. (2022). The psychology of getting busy: Multitasking as a consequence of goal activation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(1), 137-160.https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001077
（需要英文原文的朋友，请联系微信：millerdeng95）
