Women ‘more competitive’ than men when the going gets tough

Women are more cunning and competitive than men when the going gets tough, according to a new research.

Psychologist Joyce Benenson, of Harvard University, found that instead of physical violence women rely more on subtle forms of aggression, such as excluding someone from a group if they think they are a threat.

As part of the study, Benenson asked volunteers to play a game against two hypothetical partners.

Volunteers had the option of playing alone or joining forces with an opponent.

The results revealed that when volunteers played the game with no threat of social exclusion there was no difference between men and women.

However, when the exclusion factor was used, women chose to join forces with an opponent and exclude the third player more often than the male volunteers.

"The social worlds of men and women differ in that females have to worry about alienating others, whereas males worry about getting beaten up. As their primary competitive strategy, females may attempt to form an exclusionary alliance, whereas males may try to directly dominate an opponent," the Daily Express quoted Benenson as saying.

The study has been published in the journal Psychological Science.