This research assessed whether males and females differ in their group task performance. Participants worked individually or in three-person same-sex groups on a production task, which required the generation of ideas, or on a discussion task, which required group members to reach consensus concerning their evaluation of an issue. Because the content of the tasks was carefully selected not to favor the interests and expertise of one sex over the other, no sex differences were expected when subjects worked individually. Indeed, no gender differences were obtained in individual production performance and only the creativity of the discussion problems was affected by gender, such that males working individually generated more creative solutions than did females. In addition, consistent with prior research, men in groups generated more solutions to the production problems than did women, and women in groups generated higher quality solutions to the discussion problems than did men.

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