"In fact, within academic departments women of different social or professional "ranks" cooperate with each other less well than men do, according to Joyce Benenson, an Associate of Harvard's Human Evolutionary Biology Department and Professor of Psychology at Emmanuel College, Richard Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology and Henry Markovits, from the University of Quebec at Montreal, the study's co-authors. With full professors of the same sex, they said, the study found men and women cooperated equally well. The study is described in a March 3 paper published in Current Biology."Gender stereotypes often characterize males as hyper-competitive, whereas women are thought to be more communal and willing to cooperate. But a new study suggests the opposite is true, at least when the competition is publishing and the setting is academia.
In analyzing publication records of 50 North American universities, researchers at Harvard University showed men were more likely to co-author a study with someone of the same sex but of lower or higher professional rank -- a professor teaming with an associate professor, for example -- than women were.
The study found that men and women were equally prone to cooperate with peers of the same professional ranking.
"In ordinary life we often think of women as being more cooperative and friendly with each other than men are," explained lead author Joyce Benenson. "But this is not true when hierarchy enters the picture."
The researchers chose academia for their study because equal numbers of men and women with easily quantifiable ranking and mutual investment were less apparent in government or business settings.
Even within academia, sufficient numbers of women researchers weren't found in areas of study such as biology, chemistry and physics. Researchers settled on psychology departments as the most suitable for testing their hypotheses about gender differences and cooperation.
"People are often upset to hear evidence of sex differences in behavior," Benenson said. "But the more we know, the more easily we can promote a fair society."
Benenson says more research is needed to determine why women don't cooperate more in academia. It's possible that they attempt cooperation but fail for one reason or another, or that men somehow encourage the lack of female cooperation.
The findings of the study were published recently in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/03/03/Women-less-cooperative-than-men-in-academia-study-finds/2511393874867/#ixzz2uyqWx7NO
In analyzing publication records of 50 North American universities, researchers at Harvard University showed men were more likely to co-author a study with someone of the same sex but of lower or higher professional rank -- a professor teaming with an associate professor, for example -- than women were.
The study found that men and women were equally prone to cooperate with peers of the same professional ranking.
"In ordinary life we often think of women as being more cooperative and friendly with each other than men are," explained lead author Joyce Benenson. "But this is not true when hierarchy enters the picture."
The researchers chose academia for their study because equal numbers of men and women with easily quantifiable ranking and mutual investment were less apparent in government or business settings.
Even within academia, sufficient numbers of women researchers weren't found in areas of study such as biology, chemistry and physics. Researchers settled on psychology departments as the most suitable for testing their hypotheses about gender differences and cooperation.
"People are often upset to hear evidence of sex differences in behavior," Benenson said. "But the more we know, the more easily we can promote a fair society."
Benenson says more research is needed to determine why women don't cooperate more in academia. It's possible that they attempt cooperation but fail for one reason or another, or that men somehow encourage the lack of female cooperation.
The findings of the study were published recently in the Cell Press journal Current Biology.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2014/03/03/Women-less-cooperative-than-men-in-academia-study-finds/2511393874867/#ixzz2uyqWx7NO
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