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A group of psychologists and economists at Jaume I University, in Spain, has found evidence that women are more generous than men. In their study in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, Iván Barreda-Tarrazona, Ainhoa Jaramillo-Gutiérrez, Marina Pavan, and Gerardo Sabater-Grande conducted experiments with volunteers playing "the Dictator Game."

Prior research has suggested that men and women are nearly equal regarding financial generosity. But the team noted that virtually all such studies have involved small numbers of volunteer participants. In this new work, the group attempted to learn more about gender-based generosity by recruiting 1,161 volunteers to play the Dictator Game, and used the results to measure generosity.

The Dictator Game is a type of ultimatum game developed by psychologists to determine if people act solely out of self-interest. Players are given a certain amount of money and are asked if they would like to share some or all of it with a second, anonymous player. The second player is at the mercy of the first; they will receive only the amount offered by the first player.

For this new study, the researchers ran the same experiment several times, once in each of the years 2020, 2022 and 2023, for a total of 1,161 male and female players—every time, the first player was given €10 and then asked how much, if any of it, they would like to share with a second unknown, randomly selected second player.

The research team then tallied up the results and compared them by gender. In looking at the data, the group was surprised to find that women were far more likely to give some of the money to the second player. The players were also paired with a different person when it came time for them to take on the role of the second player; therefore, no reciprocity was involved.

The researchers found that women gave away 40% more money than men. The researchers also asked each of the players to first fill out a personality profile—they found that people who were gauged as more open and more tolerant were more likely to give more. They noted that women with stronger reasoning skills were more likely to give less than other women with weaker reasoning skills.

They also acknowledge that generosity was measured in a constrained environment; thus, it is not known if such gender differences exist where people know those who might be receiving the money or when others might be watching to judge them.

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