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.
研究表明，當面臨可能會被排擠的困境時，女性一般會先發制人，先把別人排擠出去。而男性則不會這麼做。
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.
來自伊曼紐爾學院和哈佛大學的研究人員做了這樣一個實驗：受試者參與一項三人電腦隨機遊戲，對手是兩個以卡通形象出現在電腦螢幕上的人物。每個受試者可玩28輪，最終目標是贏積分，賺大錢。
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.
每輪開始，受試者都能看到自己和兩位虛擬對手的排名。而後他們可據此選擇繼續獨自作戰還是與對手中的一人（甚至兩人）進行合作，最後瓜分得分。男女受試者反應大致相同，要麼選擇單打獨鬥，要麼選擇合作。
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.
然而，當被告知“若選擇獨自奮鬥，對方將會聯手出擊，戰敗者則會被驅逐出局”時，女性受試者的策略開始發生變化。受試者還被告知，如果他們搶先與某一對手聯手，落單的對手將被驅逐出去。結果表明，男性受試者的表現和之前一致。而女性受試者就不一樣了。她們開始更多地尋求合作。
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.
這種性別差異在於人們對社會威脅的反應依賴於自身所傾向的關係模式——男性更喜歡群體活動，而女性則偏向於封閉、一對一的關係。
"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.
“當女性有了好友，她會避免和其他人過從甚密，還會擔心是不是會有人把自己的好友搶走，”首席研究員喬伊斯說道。而如果男性與組內成員產生衝突，也不會覺得後果很嚴重。