研究发现：面对排挤 男女有别

When faced with the threat of being excluded from a group, women are likely to respond by excluding someone else. Meanwhile, that threat made no difference to men, according to a recent study。

Researchers from Emmanuel College and Harvard University had participants play a game in which they faced off against two other players represented by cartoons on a computer screen. Each participant played 28 rounds of a computer-driven game of chance, the object of which was to gain points to increase the amount of money earned at the end。

At the start of a round, participants learned their standing as well as the standings of the other two players. They then had the opportunity to choose to either compete alone, or form an alliance with one or cooperate with both other players and so split their points. Both men and women responded in roughly the same way, choosing to compete alone or to cooperate。

However, a difference emerged once the participants were told, "If you compete alone, your two opponents will form an alliance and exclude you if they win." They were also told that if they formed an alliance with another player, the third player would be excluded. Male participants responded in the same way they had in the original game. The women, however, did not. They formed significantly more alliances than their male counterparts。

The key to this difference in how we respond to social threats lies in the types of relationships to which men and women gravitate – men prefer to socialize in groups, while women prefer close, one-on-one relationships。

"In order for a female to have a best friend, you have got to get rid of other people and you have got to be worried that someone is going to steal your best friend," lead researcher Joyce Benenson said. If a man has a conflict with someone else in his group, the implications aren't devastating, she said。研究表明，当面临可能会被排挤的困境时，女性一般会先发制人，先把别人排挤出去。而男性则不会这么做。

来自伊曼纽尔学院和哈佛大学的研究人员做了这样一个实验：受试者参与一项三人电脑随机游戏，对手是两个以卡通形象出现在电脑屏幕上的人物。每个受试者可玩28轮，最终目标是赢积分，赚大钱。

每轮开始，受试者都能看到自己和两位虚拟对手的排名。而后他们可据此选择继续独自作战还是与对手中的一人(甚至两人)进行合作，最后瓜分得分。男女受试者反应大致相同，要么选择单打独斗，要么选择合作。

然而，当被告知“若选择独自奋斗，对方将会联手出击，战败者则会被驱逐出局”时，女性受试者的策略开始发生变化。受试者还被告知，如果他们抢先与某一对手联手，落单的对手将被驱逐出去。结果表明，男性受试者的表现和之前一致。而女性受试者就不一样了。她们开始更多地寻求合作。

这种性别差异在于人们对社会威胁的反应依赖于自身所倾向的关系模式——男性更喜欢群体活动，而女性则偏向于封闭、一对一的关系。

“当女性有了好友，她会避免和其他人过从甚密，还会担心是不是会有人把自己的好友抢走，”首席研究员乔伊斯说道。而如果男性与组内成员产生冲突，也不会觉得后果很严重。