Do women behave more reciprocally than men? (Hint: yes)

Do women behave more reciprocally than men? Gender differences in real effort dictator games
Heinz, Matthias, Rau, Holger A., and Juranek, Steffen

Abstract:

We analyze dictator allocation decisions in an experiment where the recipients have to earn the pot to be divided with a real-effort task. As the recipients move before the dictators, their effort decisions resemble the first move in a trust game. Depending on the recipients’ performance, the size of the pot is either high or low. We compare this real-effort treatment to a baseline treatment where the pot is a windfall gain and where a lottery determines the pot size. In the baseline treatment, reciprocity cannot play a role. We find that female dictators show reciprocity and decrease their taking-rates significantly in the real-effort treatment. This treatment effect is larger when female dictators make a decision on recipients who successfully generated a large pot compared to the case where the recipients performed poorly. By contrast, there is no treatment effect with male dictators, who generally exhibit more sefish behaviour.

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paul walter
paul walter
13 years ago

Reducing and probably too far, women lack the physical firepowerof men, they rely on their wits, instead: net working and negotiating are part of the suite.