Gender and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

这项研究扩展了最近关于性别影响“社会困境”中合作的条件的研究，或者是在个人利益与群体利益之间造成冲突的集体行动情况下的合作。 尽管理论上认为女性比男性更有可能合作，但近四十年的研究未能找到与这些期望一致的明确模式。 这项研究的首要目标是检验未能从之前的工作中得出更明确的结论是否源于过去的研究完全依赖“囚徒困境”（PD）范式来寻找性别差异。 一些理论表明，我们应该预见到合作中存在性别差异，但在合作伙伴关系中则不一定。 更具体地说，这些理论预测，女性更有可能对社会困境中的“恐惧成分”（一个人的合作可能被利用的前景）做出不合作的反应，而男性更有可能对“贪婪成分”（搭便车的诱惑）做出不合作的反应。 由于PD情况同时包含恐惧和贪婪成分，因此之前的研究没有显示性别反应的更清晰证据也就不足为奇了。 这里将进行两项实验研究，旨在理清合作中的恐惧和贪婪成分。 第一项研究改变了恐惧和贪婪成分的相对大小。 第二项研究调查了群体的性别构成对合作的影响。 由于社会困境是广泛的社会、经济和政治形势所固有的，因此这项研究的更广泛影响部分在于它能够阐明在个人利益和集体利益发生冲突的情况下导致合作或不合作的因素。 此外，这项研究应该更好地理解各种集体行动背景下行为性别差异的决定因素，包括友谊和家庭、邻居之间、工作场所的日常社会交流，以及对大型组织和集体行动的贡献和参与。

This research extends recent work on the conditions under which gender affects cooperation in "social dilemmas," or collective action situations that pose conflicts between the individual's own interests and the group's interests. Despite theoretical expectations of gender differences in which women are seen as more likely to cooperate than men, nearly four decades of research has failed to find clear patterns consistent with these expectations. The first goal of this research is to examine whether the failure to draw more definitive conclusions from previous work stems from the fact that past studies have relied exclusively on the "Prisoners' Dilemma" (PD) paradigm to look for gender differences. Several theories suggest we should expect gender differences in cooperation, but not necessarily in PD. More specifically, these theories predict that females are more likely to respond non-cooperatively to the "fear component" in social dilemmas (the prospect that one's cooperation may be exploited), while males are more likely to respond non-cooperatively to the "greed component" (the temptation to free-ride on others' cooperation). Since the PD situation contains both fear and greed components, it is not surprising that previous research has not shown clearer evidence of gendered responses. Two experimental studies will be conducted here in an effort to disentangle the fear and greed components of cooperation. The first study varies the relative size of the fear and greed components. The second study investigates the effects of the gender composition of groups on cooperation. Because social dilemmas are inherent in a wide range of social, economic, and political situations, the broader impacts of this research lie, in part, in its capacity to illuminate the factors that lead to cooperation or failure to cooperate in situations where there are conflicts between individual and collective interests. Further, this research should produce a better understanding of the determinants of gender differences in behavior in a variety of collective action contexts, from everyday social exchanges in friendships and families, between neighbors, in workplaces, as well as in contributions to and participation in large-scale organizations and collective action.