Are men hard-wired to take more risks?

Why are so many young men dying in our seas? This was the question raised by today’s startling statistic that ten times more men than women died in the waters around Britain’s coast last year.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), who collected the data, warned that young men are in particular danger, pointing out that during the summer heatwave it is easy for people to be lured into dangerously cold waters. One tragic case highlighted was the 15-year-old Ben Quartermaine, who drowned last month after swimming with a friend near Clacton Pier in Essex.

Some have looked to men’s jobs to explain the disparity - men are more likely to work on boats, for example. But it’s difficult to escape the underlying trend that psychologists have pointed to for years: men, it seems, are systematically more likely than women to take dangerous risks.

The male risk-taking tendency has been confirmed in countless psychological studies, most colourfully by researchers at the University of Stockholm last year, who watched hours of the television quiz show Jeopardy and found male contestants more likely than their female counterparts to gamble all of their money on one question.

But why are men more risky? What makes a teenage boy put himself in a dangerous situation while his female classmate might hold back?

Many psychologists point to evolution. In hunter-gatherer societies, it is said, men were the ones who ventured from their caves to hunt wild animals, whilst women focused on caring for children. In that ruthlessly competitive world it would be almost impossible to catch a sabre-tooth tiger without allowing some degree of risk. We’re born with it, in other words - nature rather than nurture.

Geoff Trickey, a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, agrees that, from birth, some are more inclined towards risk than others. It’s all dependent on personality, he says, which he divides into four ‘types’ separated by emotion and rationality. And the personalities that lend themselves to risky behaviours are indeed more likely to be found in men, he says.

“If you read autobiographies by big risk takers, you can see it there,” he says. “You might not see it in every decision they make, but it will write your biography, because over time you will more often than not succumb to that temptation to take the risk.” He points to the British naval pilot Eric "Winkle" Brown as a typical risk-taker.

The fact that men are far more likely to drown, he says, is a consequence of the more risk-prone personalities they were given at conception.

Trickey said he had just returned from a summer holiday at Watergate Bay in Cornwall, where he could see the male risk gene in action.

“It’s a very popular place for surfers, but nearly all the surfers there are male. Yesterday we were sitting on a beach and there were a couple of elderly guys in a motor boat who clearly didn’t know what they were doing … but that’s what they wanted to do.”

Not all psychologists agree with the idea that risk is hard coded into the male of the species, however.

Dr Thekla Morgenroth, who researches Social Psychology at the University of Exeter, believes it’s far more nurture than nature. Men, she says, are told from birth they will be considered more masculine if they show daring. They’re told to “be a man” and encouraged to pursue physical, combative sports. Here lies the root of the male drowning crisis, she believes.

“I don't think men are born with a desire to go into water … it doesn’t really make evolutionary sense for me to just have this desire to go out into rough water,” she said. “It is much more that in certain communities or cultures or societies, it’s seen as something that’s masculine and daring.”

“Men are ready to be masculine and daring, to prove their masculinity, especially in front of other men, and that’s a way they can do that.”

She doesn’t even believe that men take more risks than women - it’s just that women are socialised into taking different types of risk. Women are more likely to take up horse-riding and cheerleading, for example (both relatively risky pursuits) and far more likely to get plastic surgery. In our sexist society, however, it is only men’s risks that are regarded as truly dangerous, while the daring women of history are largely forgotten.

Whatever the reason, Geoff Trickey is quick to point out that we still, of course, have control over our own risk-taking. Young men are not destined to drown in the English Channel just because evolution says so. If enough people listen to warnings from organisations like the RNLI, these tragic drowning incidents can - and hopefully will - become less common.

“Personality doesn’t choreograph your every move, it can’t do that,” he says. “If you are a risk taking person - I am - it doesn’t mean you have to take risks all the time. And it doesn’t mean you can’t be aware of it and manage it. We would say people have free will.”