研究显示，女性在工作中的“亲和力”可能比男性更重要

研究显示，女性在工作中的“亲和力”可能比男性更重要

Worrying about what other people think at work is something women have to contend with far more than men, a small new study suggests.

一项新的小型研究表明，女性在职场中比男性更需要担心别人的看法。

The experiment included only 32 participants, but economists in Germany say their "clear and consistent" findings are thorough evidence of a newly-identified gender discrepancy.

该实验只有32名参与者，但德国经济学家表示，他们“清晰而一致”的发现，是新发现的性别差异的充分证据。

Experiments have found that when people are placed in pairs, the contributions of both male and female workers depend on how they feel about their female partner. Basically, the authors explain, in pretty much every interaction a woman has in the workplace, 'likeability' is either an asset or a hurdle.

实验发现，当人们成对放置时，男性和女性工作者的贡献取决于他们对女性伴侣的感觉。作者解释说，基本上，在女性在职场的几乎每一次互动中，“亲和力”要么是一种优势，要么是一种障碍。

For men, on the other hand, likeability matters only if they interact with the opposite sex, they add.

他们补充道:“另一方面，对于男性来说，只有与异性交往时，他们的受欢迎程度才重要。”

In all-male groups, being likeable was neither an asset nor a hurdle. In the study, male participants cooperated and coordinated to the same extent, regardless of their feelings towards one another. Only in mixed groups did they appear more sensitive to the perceptions of others.

在纯男性群体中，讨人喜欢既不是优势，也不是障碍。在这项研究中，男性参与者在同等程度上进行合作和协调，而不考虑他们对彼此的感受。只有在混合的群体中，他们对他人的看法更敏感。

As soon as one of them (or both) is a woman, however, the situation changes, the authors describe.

“然而，一旦其中一人(或两人)是女性，情况就会改变。”作者写道。

Then, likeability considerations become relevant, turning low likeability into a disruptive factor - in a sense an exogenous 'hurdle' - that impedes successful co-operation and reduces performance outcomes. Women always face this potential hurdle, men don't.

“然后，受欢迎程度的考虑变得相关，把低受欢迎程度变成一个破坏性因素——在某种意义上是一个外生的‘障碍’——阻碍成功的合作，降低绩效结果。女人总是会面临这个潜在的障碍，而男人不会。”

To figure this out, researchers split participants into pairs or groups to play games in which imaginary financial rewards were given for cooperation and coordination.

为了弄清楚这一点，研究人员将参与者分成两组或两组，让他们玩一个游戏，在这个游戏中，合作和协调会得到假想的经济奖励。

Beforehand, each participant was given a photograph of their teammates and asked to rank them based on their likeability at first sight. In a cruel twist, they were then told how they had been ranked by their teammates.

在此之前，每个参与者都拿到了一张他们队友的照片，并被要求根据他们第一眼看到的可爱程度对他们进行排名。残酷的是，他们被告知他们是如何被他们的队友排名的。

During one of the games, two partners were asked to contribute up to 6 euros to a joint investment. The greedy gamble was essentially to keep more for yourself and win off of your partner's sacrifice. In the end, the authors say men gave about 4.05 euros on average, while women gave about 3.92.

在其中一场比赛中，两名合作伙伴被要求共同出资最多6欧元。贪婪的赌博本质上是为你自己保留更多，并从你伴侣的牺牲中获利。研究报告的撰写者说，最后，男性平均捐款约4.05欧元，女性捐款约3.92欧元。

Still, that was for all groups. In single sex groups, the women who didn't like their partner much contributed 30 percent less on average than those who felt some mutual affinity. For men, liking one another made little difference - the average contributions were fairly similar.

不过，这是针对所有群体的。在单性别群体中，不喜欢自己伴侣的女性比那些感觉彼此有一定亲和力的女性平均贡献少30%。对于男性来说，彼此喜欢几乎没有什么区别——平均贡献相当相似。

Only when the teams were mixed, did men begin to show some vulnerability to this factor. When mutual likeability was low, men gave 50 percent less than if it was high, while women gave only 37 percent less.

只有在男女混合的情况下，男性才开始对这种因素表现出一定的脆弱性。当双方的好感度较低时，男性给出的好感度比高时低50%，而女性仅低37%。

During another game, where players try to choose the same number - women in all-female groups were willing to gamble much less when likeability was low. Whereas men in all-male groups went 'all in' no matter what the level of likeability was.

在另一场游戏中，玩家试图选择相同的数字——当受欢迎程度较低时，全女性组的女性愿意赌得少得多。而在完全由男性组成的小组中，无论受欢迎程度如何，男性都会全力以赴。

We expected that there would be a meaningful gender difference in behaviour, economist Leonie Gerhards from the University of Hamburg, Germany, told Newsweek.

德国汉堡大学的经济学家Leonie ger告诉《新闻周刊》的记者:“我们预计在行为上会有明显的性别差异。”

However, we had not expected that this difference would be so stark.

“然而，我们没想到这种差异会如此明显。”

This isn't to say there's something intrinsically different about men and women; they could simply be living up to cultural expectations.

这并不是说男人和女人有什么本质上的不同;他们可能只是不辜负文化期望。

Whatever the cause, the authors maintain it's a factor that has the ability to impede team cooperation, especially in all-female and mixed teams. They even go so far as to use it to explain at least a part of the gender wage gap.

不管是什么原因，作者认为这是阻碍团队合作的一个因素，尤其是在女性和混合团队中。他们甚至用它来解释性别工资差距的一部分。

Aggregated over all rounds of both games and all teams, women earn on average 4.36 [percent] less than men in our experiment, the authors write.

作者写道:“在我们的实验中，在所有的比赛和团队中，女性的平均收入比男性低4.36%。”

In same-sex teams, the gender pay gap is even larger and amounts to 7.75 [percent] lower earnings for women on average.

“在同性团队中，性别收入差距甚至更大，女性的平均收入比男性低7.75%。”

Previous research in economics and social psychology has also noted important gender differences in social interactions that might play into larger injustices. Some studies suggest, for instance, that likeability and success are negatively correlated for women, a conundrum known as the 'likeability trap'.

先前在经济学和社会心理学方面的研究也注意到社会交往中重要的性别差异可能会导致更大的不公平。例如，一些研究表明，受人喜爱和成功对女性来说是负相关的，这就是所谓的“受人喜爱陷阱”。

But while it certainly seems plausible that our concern for what other people think can influence our behaviour and cooperation at work, more research will be needed before we can claim any gender discrepancies with certainty.

但是，尽管我们对他人想法的关注可能会影响我们的行为和工作中的合作，这似乎是合理的，但在我们能够肯定地宣称存在性别差异之前，还需要更多的研究。