Picture this: you and your family and friends are cowering in a cellar, listening to the footsteps of enemy soldiers overhead.

A baby begins to whimper. If the soldiers hear it, you will be found and shot. To save the lives of everyone else, could you suffocate the infant?

Sorry to make you think about such an awful predicament, but this is the type of question a group of 6000 guinea pigs have had to answer as psychiatrists, led by Dr Paul Conway of the University of Cologne, tried to establish whether men and women react differently to complex moral situations. The results of this research, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, are stark. They suggest that men have far less difficulty in taking a brutal decision - what's known as the Jack Bauer response - if it will mean a better outcome for the majority.

Apparently it is not that women are unaware of the logic of smothering the baby who will otherwise betray the group. As in another example they were given - could they have killed Hitler's mother when she was pregnant with him, thereby saving millions of lives? - it seems that the emotional implications of such deeds weigh far more heavily upon women. Acting purely from utilitarian motives would appear to be a male speciality. As Conway commented, women say, "I get the reasons to do this, but there are also emotions that are so strong in my gut telling me not to do it."

As someone who watches schlock thrillers with a man who frequently urges the hero to deal summarily with the villains - "Bite his nose off!" is his favourite injunction - it should come as no surprise how heartless men can be. But since I know this same person has trouble killing a wasp, and averts his head at the first sight of fake blood on the screen, I have never taken his comments very seriously.

In light of this research, though, perhaps I ought to be less dismissive. What these findings show is not only that women are less violent by nature, but that even in positions of life-threatening duress we are more likely to recoil from killing. Men, on the other hand, will steel themselves to do it.

No doubt we should find this reassuring. Haven't we always been told that if the world were run by women, it would be a gentler place? I certainly believe there would have been fewer wars had women held the reins of power. Whether it's because we are more empathetic or because we better recognise the fragility and value of life, women tend to be happier to talk than to shoot. That's one of many reasons why it would be good to see more of us in charge, be it as President of the United States or Governor of the Bank of England.

Yet as Margaret Thatcher showed, when she went to war over the Falklands, being a woman is no guarantee of being a pacifist or a peace-maker. Sometimes, indeed, one wonders if women who get to the pinnacle of a career, whatever their field, are more pugnacious than their male counterparts since the struggle to reach that point is so tough that only the most determined or ruthless make it. Until the workplace is awash with women in influential roles, those who crash through the glass ceiling will never be typical of the rest of us.

Since the world has always been run by powerful, assertive men, it is likely that this has resulted in keeping not just most women out of positions of authority, but also those men who don't conform to the harsh herd mentality in which the ends justify the means. The result has been an ever-deepening culture of heroic certitude and refusal to compromise, of confrontation rather than discussion. Centuries of such indoctrination, one suspects, have coloured the answers given to these psychiatrists, men knowing how they ought to react, in theory at least.

In the run-up to the General Election there is a growing clamour for more women to go into politics, not only to have their voices heard, but to help change the old tribal way politics is conducted. Perhaps there ought also to be a similar plea for an influx of men who don't conform to the macho stereotype and who, like women, would rather use their brains, or listen to their consciences, than resort to aggression, intimidation and swagger. The Jack Bauers of the world might be handy to have around when danger looms, but instead of making the world a safer place, men like this seem to have a knack of turning a lit match into a towering inferno.