According to a group of researchers at the Michigan State University, it would appear that men and women display prejudice for different reasons. This is one of the few studies to look at what causes the two genders to behave in this manner. Until now, it was thought that men and women had similar reasons for behaving this way.
What the team determined was that aggression is what makes men more likely to exhibit prejudice, whereas women engage in this behavior primarily out of fear. For instance, group-based aggression and discrimination has been conducted by men against men for millennia.
MSU evolutionary psychologist Carlos David Navarrete argues that the evidence to support this line of thought stretches back thousands of years, ever since males started coming together in large groups, and then attacking similar groups.
When this happened, one of the groups would lose, taking the other's women as their own, the experts adds. But history teaches us that this type of behavior has not disappeared in modern times. Recent wars in Central Africa and the Balkans saw the exact same behaviors taking place.
Details of the study were published in the latest issue of the research journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Experts from the University of Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and the University of Oxford, in the UK, were also a part of the study .
By using the “male warrior hypothesis,” the team was able to explain why the social psychologies and behaviors of men and women differ so much. Evolution drove the two genders on different roads, based on what each of them was doing at the time. For men, the favorite past time was war.
The aggressive nature of men is highlighted by the fact that they tend to be more prone to exhibit prejudice toward other groups, on average. Throughout history, conflict was a failsafe way of gaining access to mates, territory, resources and increased status.
The situation is the exact opposite for women, who evolved to accept advances from men in their group, but also to develop an instinctual fear for men in other groups. Females who displayed this behavior were more likely to survive, and also to ensure the survival of their children.
“Although these sex-specific responses may have been adaptive in ancestral times, they have likely lost this adaptive value in our modern society, and now act only to needlessly perpetuate discrimination and conflict among groups,” MSU researcher and lead study author Melissa McDonald explains.
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