Incels misperceive societal views, overestimating blame and underestimating sympathy

Incels significantly overestimate how much society blames them for their problems and underestimate the level of sympathy from others, according to new research published in Personality & Individual Differences.

Involuntary celibates, or “incels,” represent an online subculture of men who define themselves by their perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. The community is characterized by self-loathing, depression, and often misogynistic attitudes.

“Incels’ victimhood mindset is encapsulated by their ‘black-pill’ philosophy, a belief that there is nothing they can do to improve their romantic prospects,” write study authors William Costello and Andrew G. Thomas.

Previous research has documented various cognitive distortions among incels, such as overestimating the importance of physical appearance in female mate preferences while underestimating traits like kindness and humor. However, no study has formally investigated how incels perceive society’s views of them compared to what society actually thinks.

The researchers designed this study to address three key questions: what do people actually think about incels, how accurate are incels in perceiving these societal views, and how do incels’ self-perceptions differ from how society sees them?

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Participants were recruited through snowball sampling on social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter) and the Incels.co forum. The final sample consisted of 135 self-identified male incels (average age 27.9 years) and 449 non-incels (332 men with an average age of 32.5 years and 117 women with an average age of 30.6 years).

After providing demographic information, incel participants rated how they believed society views them, while non-incels rated their own opinions about incels using seven items on a 5-point Likert scale. These items assessed perceptions of blame, sympathy, desire for incels’ romantic success from society and other incels, danger to society, danger to themselves, and misogyny. Data were aggregated to create a composite “animosity score” reflecting overall negative perceptions.  The researchers also measured individual differences including loneliness, interpersonal victimhood, and feminist identification.

The study revealed three key findings. First, societal views of incels were broadly sympathetic or neutral on most measures. Second, incels significantly overestimated how much society blames them for their problems and underestimated the level of sympathy from others. Third, both incels and non-incels showed general agreement about the dangers incels pose to themselves and society and the extent to which incels harbor misogynistic attitudes toward women.

Interestingly, loneliness played a limited role in predicting these misperceptions, though it was associated with incels’ perceptions of societal blame. Meanwhile, tendencies for interpersonal victimhood did not strongly predict incels’ misperceptions.

A notable finding was the role of feminist identification in shaping attitudes toward incels. Higher feminist identification among non-incels was associated with decreased sympathy and support for incels’ romantic success, increased blame attribution, and higher overall animosity toward incels. This effect was particularly pronounced among women with stronger feminist identification.

The researchers suggest that while incels may overestimate general societal hostility, their perceptions of animosity from feminist subgroups appear more accurate. Both incels and non-incels, regardless of feminist identification, agreed that incels pose a danger to themselves, highlighting a shared concern about self-harm risks within the incel community.

The authors acknowledge that their recruitment strategy, which relied on snowball sampling through social media platforms, may have introduced bias by including individuals who are more familiar with incels or have stronger opinions about them compared to the general population.

Overall, these findings suggest that incels’ worldview—that society universally hates them—is largely inaccurate, which offers optimism for potential interventions and more effective approaches to help this vulnerable group.

The study, “Seeing through the black-pill: Incels are wrong about what people think of them,” was authored by William Costello and Andrew G. Thomas.