Gender and Cooperation in the Laboratory
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3915941 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Birgit Brock-Utne (0000-0001-7646-0458, Department of Education, University of Dar es Salaam & Institute for Educational Research, University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1989 |
| Volume | 26 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 47-56 |
| Publication date | 1989-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Peace Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343389026001005 |
| OpenAlex | W2121534432 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 27 |
A long and strong research tradition in social psychology has attempted to find out what factors affect the frequencies of cooperative versus competitive responses by having subjects play simple mixed motive games, e.g. Prisoner's Dilemma, in laboratory conditions. Several early studies failed to find any relationship with gender, whereas others found male pairs to cooperate more than female pairs, most notably Rapoport & Chammah (1965), using the Prisoner's Dilemma game. These results are in apparent contradiction to the general thesis that women tend to be more cooperative than men. A re-analysis from a feminist perspective is made in order to throw light on the seeming contradiction stemming from the laboratory studies. Two types of feminist analysis are applied, one from a more liberal and equality-oriented perspective and one from a more radical feminist perspective. The greater cooperativeness of males may be interpreted as an artifact of the methodology used. Men do not cooperate more than women, but choose the cooperative strategy when that is the winning one and a competitive strategy when that strategy wins. An analysis from this equality-oriented feminist perspective may show that men are bent on winning the game and use the strategy most suited to that purpose. Analysis from a more radical feminist perspective criticizes this type of context-stripped experiment to measure such a complex phenomenon as cooperation and shows that women tend to find the whole laboratory situation uninteresting and are more concerned with personal aspects of the actors in the game than with the game itself
Context (archaeology) · Contradiction · Cooperativeness · Dilemma · Economics · Epistemology · Order (exchange) · Personality · Perspective (graphical) · Prisoner's dilemma · Sociology · Academic and Historical Perspectives in Psychology · Computer Science · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology
The context of social psychology
Cooperation
Advances In Experimental Social Psychology
Sex differences in ego functioning
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Doing Feminist Research
Theories of Women's Studies
Prisoner's Dilemma
Good theory or just theory? Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Social Science
Sex differences in a mixed-motive conflict situation
The Explanation of Social Behavior
Sex Roles in a Three-Person Game
Understanding Women
Power, opportunity costs, and sex in a mixed-motive game
Variables in experimental games
Age, sex, class, and race differences in response to a two-person non-zero-sum game
Factors affecting cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma game
Motivational Bases of Sex Differences in Choice Behavior
Sex role, cooperation and competition in a two-person, non-zero sum game
Achievement, nurturance, and competition in male and female triads
Skill versus luck
Status and sex of other as determinants of behavior in a mixed-motive game
Sex differences in factors contributing to the level of cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma game
Cooperation and optimal responding in the Prisoner's Dilemma game
Effects of facilitating techniques and subject-experimenter interaction on creative problem solving
Psychology and Women
My Four Revolutions
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,16 |
| Citation span | 1989 - 2010 (22) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |