Work Men People Working Study Researchers Pay Women

In the past 30 years, both schools and businesses in the United States have "stressed" (emphasized) the importance of "teamwork," of people working together to solve a common problem instead of doing everything alone. The idea is that you will be more "productive" (get more done) and/or learn more if you work with someone else. Businesses often say they are looking to "hire" (employ) someone who is a "team player," someone who will cooperate and work together well with others.

However, not everyone likes working with a "teammate" (a person in your group or team). Researchers in a 2011 study asked 174 people to perform a simple "task" (job). For each task "participants" (those who were part of the study) completed successfully, they would be given 27 cents. They could work by themselves or with another person, but the pay they received would be the same. About 40% of the women chose to work with someone else, but only 11% of the men did. Women clearly preferred to work together more than men did.

Why did men prefer to work alone more than women? The study found that men thought working with another person would slow them down, making them less able to get the work done quickly. Yet people who worked with others actually did better on average than those who worked alone. Men were more likely to "overestimate their abilities" (think they were better than they actually were), thinking they could do better by themselves than with another person.

So how do you get men to work with others? You pay them more. When researchers in the study said that they would pay participants three cents more to join a group, the men were just as likely to join a group as the women, with about 75% choosing to work with a partner. The researchers in the study concluded that men appear to need a greater "incentive" (reward) for working with other people than women do.