How Power Is Allocated Between Men and Women

Investigations conducted over the past few years have sought to determine how people go about taking into account risk when making decisions. This may be simple for single people, but all dynamics change inside couples, where important decisions are taken together.

In most healthy relationships, men and women discuss the most important decisions, and then decide together on whether to take on the risks associated with those decisions or not.

Financial investments, insurance, retirement plans, or residential locations are all subjects that need to be agreed upon, but the way this decision-making process takes place has been little studied in science.

In a new study, a team of experts looked at how the power to make decisions is split between men and women in a stable relationship. The group learned that no clear pattern can be derived.

In other words, the majority of the deciding power is constantly circulated from the man to the woman, and vice-versa, and does not remain with either of the partners for prolonged periods of time.

The study was conducted by German researcher Anthony Ziegelmeyer from the Max Planck Institute of Economics and French scientists André de Palma and Nathalie Picard dorm the University Cergy-Pontoise in Paris, AlphaGalileo reports.

The balance of power in couple was therefore found to shift in a dynamic process, that can be affected by a very wide variety of factors, the investigators report.

In a series of experiments, the team asked men and women in couples to take on tasks in which they had to male binary choices between participating in a lottery and selecting a sure payoff.

This approach was decided upon because it involved a certain degree of risk – participants could win a lot more money at the lottery, but their wins were uncertain.

First, the researchers separate the participants from their spouse, and asked them to choice between either of the scenarios separately. Then, the couples were reunited, and both partners asked to make a decision on the same topic.

When it came to couple choices, men initially tended to have more power in influencing decisions, but the women steadily caught up as the decision-making process was unfolding, the team reveals.

Following these experiments, the researchers concluded that this process is adaptive, and that it depends entirely on the context in which the men and women are having the discussions.