Bachelor thesis: Gender differences in Social preferences and competitive behaviour

My bachelor thesis can be found here (in Dutch). The thesis is about gender differences in social preferences and in competition. The thesis mainly studies the literature and tries to form hypothesis about gender differences in team competition. I will sum up the main findings below:

Individual behaviour

On average women show greater levels of altruism and reciprocity than men. These levels seem to increase both for men and women when paired with the opposite gender.

Men are more inclined to chose a competitive environment than women.

Men perform better than women in a competitive environment. The gender of the opposition seem to have mixed effects, sometimes men perform worse when having to compete against women, sometimes they do not etc.

Team behaviour

In teams women show still show greater levels of altruism than men. However,  teams that consisted of both men and women showed the greatest levels of altruism.

Teams consisting of men perform better or the same as teams consisting of women, both in non-competitive as in competitive environments.

Teams consisting of women perform just as well or worse than teams consisting of men. Which means that team competition, in some cases, closes the gender gap in competitive behaviour.

In a non-competitive environments mixed teams performed best ( in line with the team altruism finding..).

In a competitive environment, however, mixed teams did not perform superior to single gender teams.

Nature vs Nurture

Both nature and nurture may explain these differences between genders. For example, it is found that women in their period, under the influence of increased oestrogen and progesterone levels, make similar decision as men. However, when these levels decrease, women make different decision than men.

Nurture may also play a role. An experiment indicated that in a matrilineal society (in short a society where women are the primary authority) women show more competitive behaviour than men. Which is the opposite of the finding in our patriarchal society ( where men are the primary authority).