Masculinity threat: Scope, processes, and interventions

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Melanie Caroline Steffens
• Subject Area: Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 550400981

If people belong to a social group that is important to them, a well-established finding in research is social-identity threat: Threat to group-based self-worth. Two main reasons for such threat are that an individual does not appear (proto-)typical of the social group in question in important ways or that one’s group does not appear positive compared to other social groups (it is not "positively distinct"). Particularly striking findings have emerged regarding masculinity threat in men. A multitude of different triggers have been found to lead to masculinity threats, and a large range of compensatory reactions have been observed, many of them implying negative consequences for individual men, their social environments, or societies at large. The overarching aim of the present project is to propose and test a process model of masculinity threat. Our first sub-aim is to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis of the existing experimental research on masculinity threat. We will investigate, among others, (a) whether some triggers lead to stronger compensatory reactions than others, (b) whether compensatory reactions that match the type of threat lead to stronger reactions, and © which individual and situational variables moderate the effect size. Our second aim is to investigate (a) whether after a compensatory reaction, masculinity is restored, or whether masculinity-related self-aspects are activated and lead to further similar reactions; (b) whether harmful compensatory reactions can be substituted by non-harmful ones. Using ambulatory assessment will additionally inform us about the frequency with which men experience masculinity threats in daily life, their (possibly overlooked) triggers, and real-life reactions. Correspondingly, we will test whether masculinity threat is just a sexy experimental phenomenon or a daily experience of men including real-world costs for themselves and others. Whereas both the meta-analysis and the ambulatory-assessment studies will inform the process model of masculinity threat, our third aim is to experimentally test the suggested processes systematically. At the same time, we will investigate the effectiveness of different interventions to prevent masculinity-threat reactions. In three series of experiments, we test whether harmful compensatory reactions can be prevented in straightforward ways: (a) by non-harmful compensatory reactions, (b) by teaching about masculinity threat, and © by a preceding self-affirmation exercise. The project is planned as a cooperation with Jennifer Bosson, University of South Florida, USA, who is one of the leading experts on masculinity threat, and with Ece Acka, Ege University, Turkey, who will test non-WEIRD samples and thus cultural boundary conditions of findings. Tanja Lischetzke, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau, will cooperate on the ambulatory-assessment studies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Turkey, USA
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Ece Akca; Professorin Jennifer Bosson, Ph.D.
• Co-Investigator: Professorin Dr. Tanja Lischetzke