Gender Differences in Prisioners´ Dilemma

Charles Darwin (1874) stated that "women are less selfish but men are more competitive". Very recent papers (Eckel & Grossman, 1998, 2001 or Andreoni & Vesterlund 2001, among others) have shown the relevance of gender in altruism in both ultimatum and dictator games. In this paper we analyse the role of gender inone-shot Prisoners' Dilemma. We use payments cards to reveal players' values of the game, what gives information about players' beliefs on rival's cooperativeness.Surprisingly 15% of population choose the cooperative action although the gender effect is quite ambiguous in actions. Within those players who choose the cooperative action, females do so believing her rival will defect.