2020/11/17 by Rushika De Bruin, Larissa K. Barber · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Personal Information Management and User Behavior #Job Satisfaction and Organizational Behavior #Team Dynamics and Performance
paper · doi:10.1177/0033294120973946
openalex publication_date 2020/11/17 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/04
This project explored social evaluations of electronic multitasking during work meetings, including factors that may affect whether it is seen as a counterproductive meeting behavior. We used an experimental vignette design to test whether social evaluations (norm violating, agency, and communalism) of a hypothetical coworker’s electronic multitasking differed by whether the secondary task was relevant to the meeting (Study 1; N = 274) or ambiguous (Study 2; N = 188). Observers evaluated task-irrelevant multitasking as more of a norm violation and less communal compared to task-relevant multitasking, and work-related tasks were evaluated as more agentic than nonwork-related tasks. Ambiguous tasks were also rated as more agentic than task-irrelevant multitasking. Taken together, our results show that the nature of the secondary task reduces negative perceptions of coworkers’ electronic multitasking behavior during meetings. However, electronic multitasking for any purpose, even if relevant, was generally judged negatively consistent with expectations for a counterproductive meeting behavior.