Recent research published in Journal of Experimental Politics This suggests that threatening men’s sense of masculinity may not lead them to adopt more conservative or typically masculine political beliefs. Researchers tested thousands of participants across the United States and found no consistent evidence that making men feel insecure about their gender identity changes their political attitudes.
In both popular culture and politics, many commentators argue that society is facing a crisis of masculinity. Some politicians have made this idea central to their campaign platforms, suggesting that traditional masculinity is under attack. Sociologists and psychologists often attribute the rise in far-right extremism and resistance to women’s equality to a concept known as masculinity threat. Masculinity Threat is the theory that masculinity is a precarious and precarious position that men must constantly acquire and defend.
According to this theory, being female is seen as a natural biological development, and male identity is understood to be more vulnerable. When men feel their gender identity is being challenged, they tend to overcompensate by displaying extreme displays of stereotypical masculinity. This overcompensation can manifest as increased physical aggression and risk-taking. Some scientists suggest that it may also affect a person’s social and political views.
To test this idea, an oft-cited 2013 study measured how men react when their masculinity was questioned in a laboratory setting. That original study found that men who experienced gender identity threat were more likely to support war, homophobia, and domination over other groups. The authors of this older study reasoned that by endorsing conservative views, men could reaffirm their gender identity.
The 2013 paper was so influential that the scientists behind the new study wanted to see if they could replicate those original findings. Replicating old research is a normal part of the scientific process and provides evidence as to whether previous discoveries are valid under different conditions.
“This paper is a replication of a highly cited study published in the American Journal of Sociology,” explained study author Claire Goslow, a postdoctoral fellow at Dartmouth College’s Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and Social Sciences. “While I have always found the idea of a ‘masculinity threat’ appealing and compelling, I wondered whether the relationships identified in the original study would hold up in a more representative sample.”
Goslow, who will join Lebanon Valley College as an assistant professor in August 2026, noted that the research was conducted at a cultural time. “Given the current cultural conversation around masculinity and the so-called ‘masculinity crisis,’ it felt like a particularly important time to revisit and rigorously examine these claims,” she said.
Researchers conducted a new experiment using a nationally representative sample of 2,774 American adults, including 2,073 men. They specifically oversampled men because masculinity threat theory focuses primarily on male reactions and male insecurities. Participants were randomly divided into different groups and asked to complete an online survey. This survey was designed to measure how strongly participants identified with various masculine and feminine personality traits.
After taking a personality survey, participants in the main experimental group received randomly generated deceptive feedback. The men in this group were falsely told that their scores were within the women’s range, and the women were told that their scores were within the men’s range. This false feedback is designed to induce a sense of gender threat. Another group of participants simply received accurate feedback that they belonged within the average range for their gender, as a control group for baseline comparisons.
To improve on the 2013 study, scientists added two new experimental conditions to the study. In one group, participants received feedback that was slightly modified from their actual score. The researchers included this condition to make the threat feel more real to people who doubt extreme results that are completely fake. This allowed us to confirm that participants actually believed the feedback they were reading.
In another group, participants answered a popular culture trivia quiz and were told they had performed poorly. This common knowledge threat was designed to test alternative psychological explanations. The researchers wanted to see if people just become more conservative when they feel bad about themselves in general, rather than feeling specifically insecure about their gender.
After receiving their feedback, all participants answered a series of questions about their political and social views. The researchers measured support for the Iraq war, views on gay rights, and willingness to buy a sport utility vehicle. They also measured participants’ preference for traditionalism, the desire to stick to known, safe routines rather than trying new things.
The study also tested participants on their support for system justification and social control. System justification is the psychological tendency to defend and rationalize current social and political systems as fair and just. Social dominance is the belief that some groups of people are inherently superior to others and should maintain control over inferior groups.
The scientists also included new questions that reflect contemporary political debates that were less prominent in 2013. These latest questions asked participants about their opinions on transgender rights, legal immigration, and marijuana legalization. It also measured whether participants wanted to buy an electric car and whether women supported preferential employment policies to overcome past discrimination.
The researchers found no consistent evidence that experiencing masculinity threat changes men’s political attitudes. “I would say no because we went into this with total uncertainty as to what the outcome would be. Our results did not surprise me,” Goslow said.
Men who said they were in the feminine range showed no increased support for the Iraq war or homophobia compared to men in the control group. They also did not express a strong desire to purchase a sport utility vehicle or endorse traditionalist beliefs. Other experimental conditions also failed to produce the expected changes in political beliefs.
Although the study provides evidence that masculinity threats do not easily change political beliefs, the scientists note some potential limitations. “The first is simply that replication failures may be due to a variety of design differences between the original studies,” Gothreau explained. “These include things like timing, measurements, sample configuration, and other subtle design details.”
He noted that the research team had other explanations for the lack of effect, but could not explain them all. Moving the experiment to an online format with a diverse national sample may have changed the degree to which participants felt threatened. Being told about a woman’s test score face-to-face can have a stronger emotional impact than reading the same feedback on a computer screen.
Goslow also cautioned against drawing broad conclusions based solely on this new data. “One potential misconception would be to conclude that masculinity threats have nothing to do with politics,” she says. “That would be too much.”
“Other researchers, including Sarah DiMuccio, Eric Knowles, Brian Harrison and Melissa Michelson, have found evidence that masculinity threats are linked to greater support for policies such as the death penalty, military invasion, and hostility towards transgender people,” Professor Goslow explained. “At this time, the wider range of evidence is mixed, making this area an active and important area for continued research.”
Reflecting on the project as a whole, Goslow highlighted two key points for the public. “First, scientific discoveries cannot always be reproduced; that is actually a normal and valuable part of science,” she said. “Just because a replication fails doesn’t necessarily mean the original result was ‘wrong’.”
Instead, replication studies help refine scientific theories by showing that certain effects may only appear under certain conditions.
“Second, our findings suggest that we still have much to learn about how masculinity shapes political beliefs and behavior,” Goslow added. “This relationship appears to be more nuanced and context-dependent than commonly thought.”
Looking ahead, researchers plan to continue investigating gender and politics from new angles. “I’m now moving from studying masculinity threats specifically to exploring how self-perceived masculinity relates to political attitudes, ideological orientation, and political participation more broadly,” Goslow said.
She will focus on a concept she calls the “masculinity gap.” “I’m particularly interested in what I call the ‘masculinity gap,’ the disconnect between how masculine people see themselves and how masculine they ideally want to be, and whether that gap can help us better understand phenomena such as political extremism, grievance politics, and anti-egalitarian attitudes,” she explained.
Researchers noted that conducting this type of large-scale testing requires significant support. “This research would not have been possible without the grant we received from the Social Sciences Time-Sharing Experiment, which is funded by the National Science Foundation,” Goslow said. “Access to funding opportunities like this is critical for young researchers like me, especially when conducting large-scale, high-quality public opinion research.”
The study, “A Replication and Extension of Willer et al. (2013), Overdoing Gender: A Test of the Masculine Overcompensation Thesis,” was authored by Claire Gothreau and Nicholas Haas.
