由于智能手机，平板电脑和其他设备在我们的生活中根深蒂固，当我们在多个设备之间切换时，我们的注意力很高，这种行为称为这种行为media multitasking。Indeed, we may find ourselves mindlessly scrolling through our Twitter feed on our phone and then suddenly checking our email on our tablet. Because this behavior is new for our species, the impact of media multitasking on how we perceive and interact with the world and those around us is not well known.

先前的工作表明，频繁的媒体多任务处理与改变的认知处理有关，从而无关紧要的刺激对各种认知任务产生不成比例的强大“拉动”，并对性能产生负面影响。这使我们怀疑常规媒体多任务员在考虑其他人时是否还会纳入无关紧要的刺激，特别是在对他们从未见过的另一个人做出印象和判断时。

We hypothesized that in general, participants would use relevant information during impression formation, but that those who reported more frequent media multitasking would also, unwittingly, use irrelevant and extraneous stimuli in the environment that would affect their impressions of the other person.

为了检验这些假设，我们随机分配了参与者观看一个视频的两个版本之一，在该视频中，一个以前不知名的人（据称是同伴，但实际上是同盟国），非正式地谈论了他们坐在（假定的）宿舍室时的一天。

In one version of the video, the room was clean and organized, with various items neatly arranged and the floor clear of clutter. In another version of the video the room was generally messy and in disarray, with clothes and other personal effects strewn about the bed and floor. These neat/messy cues in the video served as potentially relevant information when forming an impression of the person (e.g., the person is tidy, or messy/disorganized).

接下来,我们随机分配参与者完整e the experiment in a testing room that was实际上整洁或凌乱。我们认为，测试室中的整洁/凌乱的提示将是偶然且无关紧要的，因此与参与者对视频中看到的人的印象无关。除了通过实验操纵相关和无关的线索外，我们还测量了参与者参与媒体多任务行为的趋势。

通过塞缪尔·高斯林（Samuel Gosling）等，我们发现参与者在形成对未知人的印象时确实结合了视频中的相关线索。与观看视频干净版本的参与者相比，分配给视频的混乱版本的参与者给出了该人的尽责性评分。

…媒体多任务实际上可能与人的感知改变有关，以意外和意外的方式与人的看法有关，当他们感知其他人时，经常出现媒体多任务的人会在不知不觉中从其环境中获取其他无关的信息。

接下来，与我们的假设一致，我们观察到测试室条件（不相关的提示）与媒体多任务处理之间存在显着相互作用，因此，分配了经常使用的媒体多任务来完成凌乱的测试室中的实验降低conscientiousness ratings, relative to ratings given in the neat testing room. There was no such pattern observed for participants who reported average or infrequent levels of media multitasking.

从这些结果中，我们得出的结论是，媒体多任务实际上可能与人们以意外和意想不到的方式改变了人们的看法，而当他们感知别人时，经常出现媒体多任务的人会在不知不觉中从环境中获取其他无关的信息。如果这是真的，那么这个过程也许也在其他领域中发挥作用，例如遇到引起饮食行为或各种情绪的环境线索。

There are a few caveats that are worth mentioning that we hope will inform future research. First, the generalizability of these findings is only limited to the college-aged population. It is not clear whether these effects would also be observed in other age groups. Additionally, we did not manipulate participants’ media multitasking behaviors directly, so a strong causal link between media multitasking and person perception cannot be made. However, future work may be able to identify preceding factors that put people at higher or lower risk of becoming frequent media multitaskers in the first place.