Ray Fisman of Slate writes, "it's a classic stereotype, and not just on Wall Street: Men aggressively compete; women collaborate and nurture." And indeed, this gender-essentialist explanation gets trotted out to explain everything from the wage gap to the problems of women's professional sports. But according to economists, competitiveness may be (surprise, surprise) culture-dependent. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh gave male and female students an adding task, and told them they could win a monetary reward for each correct solution, or for beating other players in the tournament. Men were twice as likely to choose the tournament, despite the fact that they were no better at adding than women. But when economists Uri Gneezy, Ken Leonard, and John List (the last is referenced in Superfreakonomics) performed a similar experiment, using a ball-tossing game instead of adding, the results were more complicated.

Gneezy, Leonard, and List tested their game on members of the Maasai and Khasi ethnic groups. The Maasai, of Tanzania, are a patriarchal society, and as with the Pitt students, men showed greater competitiveness. But the Khasi of northern India are more matriarchal, with property passed down through the mother's line. Among them, women were in fact more competitive. Fisman writes,

If competitive instincts aren't hardwired into the male mind, there may be hope for us to find a balance between the Khasi and Maasai ways of socializing the next generation (though social norms are very slow to change). At a minimum, we can work harder to equip young women with the knowledge and skills to compete in what remains a man's world.

I'm not sure why it has to remain a "man's world," but it is interesting to note that competitiveness may be more a feature of social power than of gender. What this shows — beyond the fact that women aren't naturally shrinking violet — is that human behaviors are malleable. I participated in a lot of psych studies in college, and one of them leapt to mind when I read about the competition research. The study started out with a word search, in which I had to find a bunch of words like "adversary," "enemy," and "battle." Then I and a male student participated in a mock labor negotiation — I was management. I'm pretty pro-labor-union in general, and I also like to think of myself as fair and generous — right after the negotiation, I assumed we'd arrived at a just compromise. Then the researchers showed us what percentage of each of our goals had been met, and it turned out I'd wiped the floor with the guy. Much of this could have been coincidence, but I also realized later that the word search was a "priming task," and that I'd probably been primed to be a hard-nosed negotiator.

As Fisman notes, the financial crisis has called into question "whether all-out competition is the best way of managing our economy." And competitiveness may not be the best way to approach interpersonal relationships either. But one thing is clear: it can be learned. If we need to, we can teach girls be just as competitive as boys, but — again, as Fisman says — it might be a better idea to teach everyone to be a little more cooperative.

Are Men More Competitive Than Women? [Slate]

Said the principal of the private Covenant School, "It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened...a victory without honor is a great loss." The issue, as he and the school see it, is poor sportsmanship: in a fever of bloodlust, the team, spectators and coaches forgot one of the tacit rules of school athletics, which is, don't humiliate an opponent. Says a mother from the opposing school, "I think the bad judgment was in the full-court press and the 3-point shots... At some point, they should have backed off."

In the case of Covenant, it's hard to say whether the issue has anything to do with sex: it's a Christian academy in a part of the country where sports, and sportsmanship, are no joke. It seems unlikely that boys would have escaped the same penalty. Yet clearly, something about the story has struck a nerve: several tipsters brought it to our attention and seemed troubled by what feels like a larger culture that discourages female competition.

Interestingly, Shakesville happens to touch on a somewhat similar issue today: the age-old practice of feminine self-sabotage. It's one of the oldest tricks in a coquette's book to play dumb and helpless and stroke a guy's ego. The blog contrasts an open instance of this — a thrown archery tourney in a Lousia May Alcott novel — with the ad campaign for the dating site Chemistry.com, specifically a woman's "vow": "I promise to take out the recycling, even though I think you’re way better at it." The double whammy of servitude and old-school feminine self-deprecation is, at best, a pretty lame marketing ploy. But none of this is, in itself, much to get one's knickers in a twist about. The issue is a deeper one, and has to do with all these things in combination: clearly those who found the Covenant forfeit troubling see a link between this sort of "graciousness" and a culture that rewards throwing games. On the other hand, surely there is something between the two — keeping the win, perhaps, while extending an apology (which, in any event, isn't going to make their humiliated rivals feel any better!) — which would serve as a better example in every respect?

School Seeks To Forfeit 100-0 Win [High School Rivals]
I Promise to Pretend That You Are More Competent Than I Am, While Still Doing The Work Myself [Shakesville]

Because the evidence of a woman being "in heat" has evolved to be subtle, contends the New Scientist, "Men become increasingly sensitive to the tiny changes that do occur. Other women also pick up on the changes, perhaps to keep an eye on the competition."

And speaking of female competition, a second recently released study shows that estrogen works in women in a similar manner to the way testosterone works in men in relation to competition. In alpha females who are "power motivated," reports Reuters, estrogen levels shoot up when they win, and plummet when they lose. The opposite happens in women who are not "power motivated": their estrogen levels fall when they win and rise when they lose. The relationship between estrogen and competition, according to scientists, is strongest in single women who are not on oral contraceptives.

'Sexy' Voice Gives Fertile Women Away [New Scientist]
Is Estrogen Testosterone For Women? [Reuters]