In addition to their notorious beauty, there could be another reason to mail-order a Russian bride. In a study that compared donations to a public goods game by Russian and Italian men and women, Russian females were constantly and, more interesting, increasingly cooperative.
The experiment involved 12 Russians and 12 Italians, made up equally of both genders, who played a public goods game on a computer. Each player started every new round with 10 'currency units' -- which the experimenters would then translate into extra credit in their course. Players have choice of donating none, a portion, or all of their money to a public pool where it is multiplied by a factor of 1/3 and then redistributed evenly among all players. This kind of game exhibits the real world tension between group and self-interest. Here are the results:
The sample size might be small, but the results do seem to suggest Russian women were uniquely cooperative. Now, if only we could get Russian women more involved in conservation...
Source: Belianin, A. and M. Novarese. 2005. Trust, communication and equlibrium behaviour in public goods.
Brain & Behavior
Comments
OK, let me apply my amazing graph-reading skills to that figure 3 right there.
Hmm...looks like the average Italian male is always dancing around the Italian female. No real surprise there.
The average Russian male, however, seems to be vacillating between wanting to be with with the Russian female and wanting to be with the Italian male, while the Russian female is slowly moving away from him. Uh...no real surprise there, either.
(This graph is 'dancefloor, viewed from above', right?)
Posted by: Phillip IV | March 5, 2010 2:39 PM
That is a really unusual anomaly for the Russian women in comparison to the other participants. I want to know why they are more attuned to collaborate.
This is an interesting exploration. I would really love to see this “Public Goods” internet game made available and played with results documented from cross sections of American participants, with some additional questions introduced to the research such as: Are we humans happier (more fulfilled, valued, appreciated, more intrinsically engaged in life...) being involved socially collaboratively, or being socially insular? We obviously have the capacity to be either, and both have hugely different outcomes personally and socially.
Reading this post, made me think of the board game “Our Town” versus the board game “Monopoly” and the consequences of nurturing collaborative thinking, or individual motivation. These two games encourage polar opposite thinking. Maybe we need to imagine developing an environmental conservation game entitled: Our Planet... ?!?! I would most certainly be willing to help develop such a tool.
So much of what we are facing on so many levels of life is essentially derived from the struggle between “Me” thinking versus “We” thinking, and perhaps more importantly, feeling. Environment, education, employment, housing, food security, family, sexuality and geopolitical thinking changes dramatically when our mind sets have different motivations. Motivation of self versus others competition takes an extraordinary amount of psychic energy to maintain, and also defend...
Our Town: http://www.boardgameratings.com/game/1052/
Posted by: Chris Martell | March 5, 2010 4:59 PM
The data from the Russian men also looks interesting . . . like they're switching back and forth between strategies. Wonder if it's a manifestation of the same ESS seen in the Prisoner's Dilemna.
Posted by: V. infernalis | March 6, 2010 7:48 PM