We treat multitasking as a skill. Job descriptions ask for it. We wear it like a badge. And somewhere along the way, someone told you the price: multitasking lowers your IQ. It makes you dumber. You've seen the stat. You may have quoted it.
It's junk.
The stat you've been quoting is junk science
The "multitasking drops your IQ" figure traces to a single 2005 experiment run for Hewlett-Packard by psychologist Glenn Wilson — eight participants, never peer-reviewed, released as a PR press note and nothing more. The media inflated it into neuroscience. Wilson himself later disowned it, saying it proved next to nothing. And what it measured wasn't a loss of IQ — it was temporary distraction while phones buzzed and email pinged. Switch the noise off and the "lost points" come back.
So no, multitasking isn't quietly lowering your IQ.
The real finding is worse.
This is an excerpt. Read the rest at brainbrutalism.com.
