Why some men don’t flex when their manhood is challenged

Men who blend emotional openness and progressive gender attitudes into their sense of manhood appear to be less reactive when their masculinity is called into question, according to new research published in Social Psychology Quarterly. While men often respond to gender-related insecurities by exaggerating tough, dominant attitudes, men in this experiment who more strongly endorsed a flexible masculine identity showed less of that overcompensation. The findings suggest that how men react to challenges to their gender status depends in part on how they define manhood for themselves.

In sociology and psychology, the dominant cultural ideal of manhood in a society is known as hegemonic masculinity. In the United States, this traditional standard expects men to be physically tough, emotionally guarded, self-reliant, heterosexual, dominant, and strictly avoidant of anything considered feminine. Because meeting all of these rigid standards at all times is nearly impossible, many men experience their gender status as fragile and easily challenged. When a man feels that his manhood has been doubted, he may engage in masculine overcompensation, which is the tendency to exaggerate aggressive, dominant, or traditionally macho behaviors in an effort to prove his status to himself and others.

Psychological research has repeatedly shown how easily this defensive reaction can be triggered. For example, a 2008 series of experiments demonstrated that people widely view manhood as an uncertain social status that must be earned and can be easily lost through a single unmanly act. Building on that idea, a 2013 experimental study found that men who were falsely told they scored in the feminine range on a survey about gender identity reacted by expressing greater support for war, more negative attitudes toward gay people, and stronger interest in purchasing sport utility vehicles.

When men face doubts about their manhood, the effects can be physical as well as attitudinal, and individual differences shape how strongly they react. In a study covered by PsyPost in 2017, men whose masculinity was challenged tried to display physical toughness by administering higher voltages of electric shock to their own arms, especially if they already saw themselves as highly masculine.

Most research on masculine overcompensation has assumed that all men measure themselves against a single, traditional standard of toughness and dominance. In recent years, however, sociologists have documented the rise of what they call hybrid masculinity, a gender style in which men selectively incorporate traits typically associated with women or marginalized groups into their identity.

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A man practicing hybrid masculinity might openly discuss his emotions, follow a skincare routine, show physical affection to male friends, or voice support for feminism and LGBTQ+ rights. The authors of a 2014 sociological review argued that adopting these traits allows relatively privileged men to create symbolic distance between themselves and traditional macho norms while still retaining their broader social status.

If hybrid masculinity gives men a way to feel secure in their gender identity without relying on rigid toughness, it raises the question of whether these men still feel compelled to act dominant when their manhood is challenged. Justin Huft, a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of California, Riverside, designed an experiment to test whether endorsing hybrid masculinity shields men from the tendency to overcompensate. Huft also set out to create the first survey tool designed to measure hybrid masculinity in statistical research.

“While there has been interesting work done on masculine overcompensation, it has largely depicted masculinity as a monolithic identity,” Huft told PsyPost. “This is inconsistent with some other work in the masculinities literature, which depicts multiple forms of masculinity. My aim was to explore how masculine overcompensation looks when accounting for another form of masculine identity.”

To test this idea, Huft recruited 988 heterosexual adult men living in the United States through the online research platform Connect. The participants ranged in age from 18 to 83, with an average age of about 40 years, and reported an average household income between $50,000 and $59,999 per year. Roughly 65 percent of the men identified as white, 15 percent as Black, 10 percent as Asian, 8 percent as Latinx, and 2 percent as another racial background. Politically, about 46 percent described themselves as liberal, 31 percent as conservative, and 22 percent as moderate, while 54 percent reported having a religious affiliation.

Before receiving any feedback, participants rated their baseline level of traditional masculinity. They also completed Huft’s newly developed 20-item hybrid masculinity questionnaire on a 5-point scale. Statistical testing showed that the new scale captured two closely related aspects of hybrid masculinity: progressive gender attitudes, such as supporting women’s and LGBTQ+ rights or agreeing that men can wear makeup, and emotional expressiveness, such as telling others when feeling sad, showing empathy, and expressing affection toward male friends.

Participants also answered questions measuring three concepts from sociological identity theory: how important being masculine was to their overall sense of self (known as identity prominence), how frequently they thought about their masculinity in daily situations like work or social events (known as identity salience), and how much they felt close friends and family viewed their masculinity the same way they did (known as identity verification).

For the experimental manipulation, participants completed items that appeared to evaluate their masculinity and were then given false feedback on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 represented feminine and 100 represented masculine. Men were randomly assigned to either a non-threatening group, where they were told that their answers placed them at the high end of the average male range, or a threatening group, where they were told that they scored at the high end of the average female range.

Following the feedback, participants completed a 21-item questionnaire measuring their agreement with traditional, dominant masculine norms on a scale from 1 to 7. This questionnaire assessed seven hallmarks of rigid manhood: emotional restriction, self-reliance, negative views of gay people, avoidance of femininity, placing a high priority on sex, desiring dominance as a leader, and valuing physical toughness.

Prior to receiving the false feedback, the two groups did not differ in their baseline traditional masculinity, measured with a separate questionnaire on which the sample averaged 5.08 out of 7. After the feedback was delivered, however, men who were told they scored in the average female range endorsed higher levels of rigid masculine norms, averaging 3.19 out of 7 compared to 2.97 out of 7 among men who were told they scored in the male range. That difference is small, about one-sixth of the typical spread in scores, but it indicates that the experimental threat triggered masculine overcompensation across the sample as a whole.

Huft then ran statistical regression models that controlled for baseline masculinity, identity importance, everyday awareness of masculinity, identity verification, religiosity, political conservatism, race, and household income. Even after accounting for all of those factors, receiving the masculinity-threatening feedback predicted a 0.17-point increase in dominant masculine norms in the baseline model, while scoring higher on hybrid masculinity was strongly linked to lower endorsement of those rigid norms overall.

When Huft tested how the two factors interacted, he found that hybrid masculinity moderated the impact of the threat, reducing the overcompensation effect by 0.23 points for each 1-point increase on the hybrid masculinity scale. In practical terms, men with low hybrid masculinity scores showed a larger increase in rigid, dominant attitudes after their manhood was questioned, whereas the gap between the threatened and non-threatened groups shrank toward zero among men who strongly endorsed hybrid masculinity.

Several background characteristics also predicted higher endorsement of rigid masculine norms regardless of which feedback participants received. Men who thought about their masculinity frequently in daily life, held more conservative political views, had lower household incomes, or identified as non-white tended to endorse traditional masculine norms more strongly.

The overall presence of a defensive reaction aligns with research covered by PsyPost in 2023, which found that threats to manhood heightened support for aggressive political and foreign-policy strategies, though that earlier work focused on political aggression rather than personal masculine norms and observed the effect among liberal men rather than conservative men. In Huft’s study, by contrast, men who scored high on hybrid masculinity tended to be more politically liberal and reacted less to the threat.

The new findings also stand in tension with a study covered by PsyPost earlier this year, which did not find an increase in conservative political views, support for war, or homophobia after a masculinity threat, though that study examined broader political and social attitudes rather than the comprehensive inventory of personal masculine norms used by Huft.

Huft offers two possible explanations for the buffering pattern found in his study. Men who embrace emotional openness and progressive views may have already loosened the tie between their sense of self-worth and traditional macho ideals, making feedback about feminine traits less upsetting, or they may draw on other aspects of their identity, such as emotional maturity or humor, to feel secure without needing to act tough.

While this flexibility appears to reduce aggressive overcompensation at the individual level, Huft cautions that hybrid masculinity does not automatically dismantle gender inequality in society. Instead, sociological theory suggests that blending softer traits into manhood can allow men to present themselves as modern and progressive while quietly preserving the social privileges associated with being a man.

“Masculinity isn’t just one thing,” Huft explained. “It contains different attitudes, behaviors, and characteristics. These different constellations of masculinity cause people to perceive and experience masculinity threats differently. This, in turn, creates different sorts of responses to masculinity threats.”

As with all research, there are some caveats to consider when interpreting these findings. Because men who scored high on the new hybrid masculinity scale also tended to report that being masculine was less central to their overall identity, the questionnaire cannot completely untangle whether these men were strategically blending gender traits to maintain their status or whether they simply cared less about manhood altogether. In addition, the experiment could not capture why men adopted hybrid traits in the first place, such as whether they adopted those traits preemptively, in response to past challenges to their manhood, or for unrelated reasons.

Hybrid masculinity was also measured rather than assigned, so men who scored high on it differed from low scorers in other ways. Most notably, they tended to be much more politically liberal, and the study did not test whether political views shaped how men responded to the threat. The new scale has so far been tested in only this one sample, and the study did not report whether participants believed the false feedback.

The study also focused exclusively on heterosexual, cisgender men in the United States, meaning the findings cannot be generalized to gay, bisexual, or transgender men. According to hybrid masculinity theorists, the ability to adopt feminine or non-traditional traits without facing harsh social penalties is often easiest for white, middle-class, heterosexual men, so future studies will need to test whether hybrid masculinity works the same way across different racial and socioeconomic groups.

It is also possible that for men who pride themselves on being progressive and emotionally sensitive, being told they scored as highly masculine could actually feel like a threat to their progressive self-image, prompting them to distance themselves even further from traditional manhood. Finally, future research could explore whether men whose manhood is challenged try to restore their pride in areas outside of gender altogether, such as by emphasizing their career achievements or financial status.

The study, “Hybrid Masculinity as a Buffer against Threats to Masculinity,” was authored by Justin Huft.