Women are 'Bitchier' than Men, a Non-Experimental Study Says

A non-experimental Canadian study conducted recently states that women portray "indirect aggression", popularly known as 'bitchiness' toward other women as a part of intrasexual competition. It was also found that this behavior is more common among women.

Women are found to show the "school girl behavior" even after as adults, which includes doing things like spreading rumors, criticizing the appearance and also defaming potential rivals by calling them promiscuous behind their backs.

 This behavior was assessed in a McMaster University lab by researchers among participants aged between 20 and 25 years. The researchers were Tracy Vaillancourt, a psychology professor at the University of Ottawa and Aanchal Sharma, a Ph.D student. About 86 straight women participants were paired and they were made to believe they were taking part in a study related to female friendship, Medical Daily reported.

An attractive blonde woman was dressed in a simple attire and her hair was tied in a simple bun, like a "conservative confederate"  and she was made to interact with one half of the paired women. The same lady was dressed ultra modernly in a low cut blouse, short skirt and boots and her hair was left untied, she looked like a "sexy confederate" and she was made to interact with the other half of the pairs.

Researchers used a 'bitchiness scale' to measure the reactions of the participants; they were scored on the basis of their body language, which included glaring, laughing sarcastically, rolling eyes and checking the confederate out.

"One participant went as far as saying that the sexy confederate was dressed that way in order to have sex with the professor," Vaillancourt told The Atlantic. Another participant passed a rude comment at the confederate before she left the room.

It was found that the group of participants, whom the sexy confederate interrupted, scored more than the other group on the scale of bitchiness. It was also found that the women who befriended the confederate were comparatively more bitchy than the strangers.  

The researchers found that women show more indirect aggressive behavior than men.

"When we aggress against somebody, we do it indirectly. When men aggress against others, a lot of times it's direct, it's verbal," said Vaillancourt, CBS News reported. "We exclude people from the peer group, we give the silent treatment ... We'll spread rumors about the person, so we'll disparage their appearance, we'll suggest that they're promiscuous, those sorts of things."

The abstract of the story is also published in the Wiley Online Library.