When it comes to cooperation, male and female minds work differently, new research shows It may come as no great surprise to either sex that, faced with a problem that must be solved by […]

It may come as no great surprise to either sex that, faced with a problem that must be solved by co-operating with others, males and females approach the task differently.

Women cooperate more when they’re being watched by other women, while men tend to cooperate better in large groups, researchers have found.

Meanwhile, although a pair of men might cooperate better than a pair of women, in a mixed-sex pair the woman tends to be more cooperative, they suggest.

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Researchers at Stanford University have discovered differences in brain activity between males and females which they believe could dictate the way males and females engage in joint activities.

“Within same-sex pairs, increased coherence was correlated with better performance on the cooperation task” Dr Baker

Probes to the head

Using a technique known as hyperscanning they were able to simultaneously record the activity in two people’s brains while they interact by attaching probes to their head.

Participants were paired up in various combinations – two males, two females or one of each – who could see, but not talk to, each other.

They were then asked to press a button when a circle on a computer screen changed colour. The goal was to press the button simultaneously with their partner and they were given 40 attempts to get their timing as close as possible.

On average, male-male pairs performed better than female-female pairs at timing their button pushes more closely, found the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports. However, the brain activity in both same-sex pairs was highly synchronised during the activity, meaning they had high levels of “interbrain coherence”.

In contrast, experiments involving males and females found them not to be in sync.

“Within same-sex pairs, increased coherence was correlated with better performance on the cooperation task,” said Dr Joseph Baker, of Stanford University. “However, the location [in the brain] of coherence differed between male-male and female-female pairs,” he added.

The research is groundbreaking in that it establishes there are differences in brain activity between males and females which influences the way they cooperate. But at this stage they don’t know what those difference are and far more research is required to understand what it is in the brain that dictates cooperation.

“Since the brains of males and females showed different patterns of activity during the exercise, more research might shed light on how sex-related differences in the brain influence the way they cooperate – at least when it comes to this particular type of cooperation,” the study suggested.