A recent study found men are more likely to say they would travel back in time and kill Hitler than women.
The findings revealed males had a greater tendency to accept harmful actions for the sake of the greater good, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology reported. The researchers believed this gender difference is a result on stronger "emotional aversion" to harmful action among women.
"Women are more likely to have a gut-level negative reaction to causing harm to an individual, while men experience less emotional responses to doing harm," said lead research author Rebecca Friesdorf.
The finding contradicts the stereotype that women's tendency to be more emotional makes them less rational.
The study looked at 6,100 participants, who were asked 20 questions that dealt with a variety of moral dilemmas such as murder, torture, and animal research. It incorporated two contrasting philosophical principles. The first was deontology, which is the view that the mortality of an action relies on how well it lines up with moral norms, and was strongly supported by Immanuel Kant. The second was utilitarianism, which holds that morality lies in the greatest good for the greatest number.
The team of researchers used a statistical technique to determine whether each participant had stronger deontological or utilitarian inclinations. They found women were more likely to lean towards deontological principles than men, but there was no perceived gender difference in utilitarian reasoning.
"The findings suggest that women have a stronger emotional aversion to causing harm than men. However, men and women engage in similar levels of rational thinking about the outcomes of harmful action. The findings are in line with previous research showing that women are more empathetic to the feelings of other people than men, whereas gender differences in cognitive abilities tend to be small or nonexistent," the researchers said.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB).
