Researchers Say Women Less Likely Than Men to Kill Hitler, if They Could Travel Back in Time
by Shiryn Ghermezian
Women are less likely than men to want to kill Nazi leader Adolph Hitler if given the ability to travel back in time, a recently published research paper revealed.
The paper analyzed 40 studies involving 6,100 respondents in a time-travel thought experiment, the New York Post reported on Friday. While 60 percent of men said they would theoretically be willing to kill Hitler, only 55 percent of women said they would be comfortable doing the same.
The paper was published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
Dr. Paul Conway, Ph.D., one of three authors of the paper, said the research describes a gender bias that surfaces across all aspects of moral decision-making, even regarding real-world decisions that do not involve imaginary time travel.
“Men pretty much mainly rely on their logic,” said Conway, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of Cologne. “That doesn’t mean that women are not logical.”
“Women and men are very similar in how much logic they apply. They both get it. They know that killing Hitler to stop WWII is better for everyone,” he continued. “It’s just that men say, ‘I’ll do it’ and that’s all. Women say, ‘but also, I really don’t want to kill someone.’”
When the New York Post pointed out to Conway that the research paper also suggests that women would be better at running the world without leading it to destruction, the professor replied, “You know, I’ve kind of been arguing that a little bit.”