Gender and Cooperation in Social Dilemmas

这项研究扩展了最近的工作条件下，性别影响合作的“社会困境”，或集体行动的情况下，造成个人的自身利益和群体的利益之间的冲突。 尽管理论上预期女性比男性更容易合作，但近四十年的研究未能找到与这些预期一致的明确模式。 本研究的第一个目标是检查是否失败，得出更明确的结论，从以前的工作源于这样一个事实，即过去的研究都完全依赖于“囚徒困境”（PD）的范式来寻找性别差异。 一些理论表明，我们应该期待合作中的性别差异，但不一定在PD中。 更具体地说，这些理论预测，女性更有可能不合作地回应“恐惧成分”的社会困境（前景，一个人的合作可能会被利用），而男性更有可能不合作地回应“贪婪成分”（诱惑搭便车对他人的合作）。 由于PD的情况包含恐惧和贪婪的成分，这并不奇怪，以前的研究没有显示性别反应的更明确的证据。 这里将进行两项实验研究，以努力解开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。 由于社会困境是在广泛的社会，经济和政治情况下固有的，更广泛的影响，这项研究在于，在一定程度上，在其能力，照亮的因素，导致合作或合作失败的情况下，有个人和集体利益之间的冲突。 此外，这项研究应该产生更好的理解的决定因素的行为在各种集体行动的背景下，从日常的社会交往中的友谊和家庭，邻居之间，在工作场所，以及在贡献和参与大型组织和集体行动。

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.