When faced with the threat of being excluded from a group, women are likely to respond by excluding someone else. Meanwhile, that threat made no difference to men, according to a recent study。
Researchers from Emmanuel College and Harvard University had participants play a game in which they faced off against two other players represented by cartoons on a computer screen. Each participant played 28 rounds of a computer-driven game of chance, the object of which was to gain points to increase the amount of money earned at the end。
At the start of a round, participants learned their standing as well as the standings of the other two players. They then had the opportunity to choose to either compete alone, or form an alliance with one or cooperate with both other players and so split their points. Both men and women responded in roughly the same way, choosing to compete alone or to cooperate。
However, a difference emerged once the participants were told, "If you compete alone, your two opponents will form an alliance and exclude you if they win." They were also told that if they formed an alliance with another player, the third player would be excluded. Male participants responded in the same way they had in the original game. The women, however, did not. They formed significantly more alliances than their male counterparts。
The key to this difference in how we respond to social threats lies in the types of relationships to which men and women gravitate – men prefer to socialize in groups, while women prefer close, one-on-one relationships。
"In order for a female to have a best friend, you have got to get rid of other people and you have got to be worried that someone is going to steal your best friend," lead researcher Joyce Benenson said. If a man has a conflict with someone else in his group, the implications aren't devastating, she said。