File Under: Female Privilege

From Chivalry Is Not Dead When It Comes to Morality from New York University.

We’re More Likely to Protect Women Than We Are Men

We’re more likely to sacrifice a man than a woman when it comes to both saving the lives of others and in pursuing our self-interests, a team of psychology researchers has found.

“Our study indicates that we think women’s welfare should be preserved over men’s,” observes Oriel FeldmanHall, a post-doctoral researcher at New York University and the study’s lead author.

The research, conducted at Cambridge University’s Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and Columbia University, appears in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.

In one experiment, study subjects read one of three versions of a “Trolley Dilemma”—a commonly used technique in psychology studies and akin to the “Lifeboat Question” (i.e., if you could save only three of five passengers in a lifeboat, whom would you choose?). In the trolley scenario, subjects read one of three versions of the dilemma, where each vignette described a man, woman, or gender-neutral bystander on the bridge. The participants were then asked how willing they were to “push the [man/woman/person] onto the path of the oncoming trolley” in order to save five others farther down the track.

The results showed that both female and male subjects were much more likely to push the male bystander or one of unspecified gender than they were the female bystander.

Dudes, don't stand on a bridge over a trolley.