MEN ENJOY COMPETITION , BUT SO DO WOMEN
Common stereotypes
would have us believe that men are more competitive and women more cooperative .Researchers of Aalto
University studied the physiological responses to competitive and cooperative
play, investigating emotions, i.e. how males and females are motivated to
behave in these situations. While males did enjoy competition more than
cooperation, females enjoyed both competition and cooperation equally.
'Although there is a
lot of research on gender differences, nobody has studied the emotions -- the
physiological mechanism that steers our behaviour -- of competitive and
cooperative activities in males and females before. This gives a better insight
into why people behave the way they do. You may unconsciously give false
information about your motivations, but your body doesn't lie', Matias
Kivikangas, a researcher in the research group, says.
'Our results suggest
that parts of the common stereotypes are untrue, at least in that women are not
enjoying cooperation any more than competition. And it seems that the fact that
men do enjoy competition more than cooperation might actually be a consequence
from gender expectations rather than innate differences.
The reported two
studies employed cooperative and competitive digital games to test the
responses. While this makes the responses more natural than a contrived
experimental procedure, the intrinsically motivated nature of the activity
limits the generalizability of the results.
'Neither males or
females experienced notable differences in negative emotions, indicating that
only positive emotions are relevant in motivating competitive behaviour. However,
separate studies with other activities should be carried out as well, because
I'd suspect that competition that the individual has not chosen themselves
might elicit different emotional reactions', Kivikangas adds.
The article was
published in the international science journal PLOS ONE.
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