Gender and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

这项研究扩展了最近关于性别在“社会困境”中影响合作的条件的工作，即在个人利益和群体利益之间造成冲突的集体行动情况。尽管理论上对性别差异的预期，即女性被认为比男性更有可能合作，但近40年的研究未能找到与这些预期一致的明确模式。这项研究的第一个目的是检验未能从以前的工作中得出更明确的结论是否源于这样一个事实，即过去的研究完全依赖“囚犯困境”范式来寻找性别差异。几种理论表明，我们应该在合作中预期性别差异，但在PD中不一定。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”(某人的合作可能被利用的前景)做出非合作反应，而男性更有可能对“贪婪成分”(搭便车的诱惑)做出非合作反应。由于帕金森氏症的情况同时包含恐惧和贪婪的成分，因此以前的研究没有显示性别反应的更明确证据也就不足为奇了。这里将进行两项实验研究，以努力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。第二项研究考察了群体性别构成对合作的影响。由于社会困境是广泛的社会、经济和政治情况所固有的，这项研究的更广泛的影响部分在于它能够阐明在个人和集体利益之间存在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在各种集体行动背景下，从友谊和家庭、邻居之间、工作场所的日常社交交流，以及对大型组织和集体行动的贡献和参与方面，性别行为差异的决定因素。

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.