Do people discriminate between men and women when they are in charge of punishing defectors or rewarding cooperators? Answering this question has potentially far-reaching implications on gender equity, since cooperative behaviour forms the basis of our societies and is typically enforced through punishment or rewarding. In this paper we report on two pre-registered experiments, that we hope shed some light on this question. Study 1 (N= 1,077 ) shows that people do not discriminate between genders when they are in charge of punishing (rewarding ) defectors (cooperators) in a one-shot public goods game. In this study, punishment/reward is implemented by asking participants whether they want to pay a cost to decrease/increase the payoff of a defector/cooperator . Study 2 (N=253) extends Study 1 to a different method of punishing/rewarding ; participants are asked to rate the behaviour of a defector/cooperator from 1 to 5 stars. In this case too, we find that people do not discriminate between genders. All these results are robust to splitting the sample by gender : in our context , neither men nor women discriminate between genders when they are in charge of punishing defectors or rewarding cooperators .
Do people discriminate between men and women when they have the option to punish defectors or reward cooperators? Here we report on four pre-registered experiments, that shed some light on this question. Study 1 (N= 544 ) shows that people do not discriminate between genders when they have the option to punish (reward ) defectors (cooperators) in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma with third-party punishment/reward . Study 2 (N=253) extends Study 1 to a different method of punishing/rewarding : participants are asked to rate the behaviour of a defector/cooperator on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. In this case too, we find that people do not discriminate between genders. Study 3a (N=331) and Study 3b (N=310) conceptually replicate Study 2 with a slightly different gender manipulation. These latter studies show that, in situations where they do not have specific beliefs about the gender of the defector/cooperator's partner , neither men nor women discriminate between genders .
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