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The male role: An investigation of contemporary norms
Abstract
Reports on the development of the Male Role Norms Inventory (MRNI), which consists of 58 items grouped into 7 subscales: Avoidance of Femininity, Homophobia, Self-Reliance, Aggression, Achievement/Status, Attitudes Toward Sex, and Restrictive Emotionality. The MRNI was administered to 287 Ss (mostly undergraduate students). Data analysis included an assessment of internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis, and analyses of variations in responses by sex, marital status, and age. Results indicate that the MRNI consists of 3 factors: Factor 1, consisting of 5 subscales, is relatively homogeneous and seems to tap aspects of male role norms that are currently changing; Factors 2 and 3, consisting of the Self-Reliance and Aggression subscales, respectively, seem to tap aspects of male role norms that remain stable. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
... should not initiate sex," "A man should not turn down sex."; Levant et al., 1992Mahalik et al., 2005). Indeed, in monogamous mixed-sex sexual relationships, people's attitudes should be influenced both by how they believe they should act as well as how they believe their partner should act, underscoring the need to account for people's traditional beliefs about both men and women together. ...
... Traditional gender roles dictate that men and women should have different patterns of sexual assertiveness. People higher in TMI believe that men should be assertive, dominant, and have a high sex drive-often initiating sex but never refusing it (Byers, 1996;Levant et al., 1992). Whereas people higher in TFI believe that women should be passive, compliant, and have a low sex drivenever initiating sex but remaining receptive to their partner's advances (Byers, 1996;. ...
... However, women's TMI should also undermine their comfort initiating sex. As traditional masculine gender roles dictate that men be dominant, active, and assertive initiators of sexual activity (Byers, 1996;Levant et al., 1992), women who hold these beliefs (i.e., are higher in TMI) may feel that depriving men of this role may threaten their masculinity, leading to negative consequences such as anger, hurt feelings, and even rejection (e.g., Lamarche et al., 2020). Moreover, women who believe that men are highly motivated to engage in sexual activity may view their partner's initiation as a demonstration of their affection and a lack of initiation as a sign of problems within the relationship. ...
Unlabelled:
Traditional gender roles dictate rigid rules and standards prescribing which behaviors, thoughts, and feelings are considered masculine and feminine within sexual contexts, and thus internalizing these beliefs (higher traditional gender ideology) may influence sexual attitudes. Prior theorizing has primarily focused on how women's traditional beliefs about women's gender roles (traditional femininity ideology) and men's traditional beliefs about men's gender roles (traditional masculinity ideology) influence their sexual assertiveness. Yet, men can hold traditional beliefs about women, and women can hold traditional beliefs about men, and these beliefs should have important implications for sexual assertiveness. We addressed this gap by testing how both heterosexual women's (n = 389) and men's (n = 393) traditional masculinity and femininity ideologies associate with their reported comfort initiating sex and comfort refusing sex in their relationships. When accounting for both sets of beliefs, women's traditional beliefs about men's and women's roles interacted to predict comfort initiating sex, but not comfort refusing sex. Men's traditional beliefs about men's roles predicted less comfort refusing sex, and their traditional beliefs about women's roles predicted less comfort initiating sex. This novel research underscores the importance of considering beliefs about both sets of traditional gender roles for understanding people's sexual attitudes.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11199-023-01366-w.
... However, masculinity has a complex relationship with health (Gerdes & Levant, 2018); reviews of widely used scales measuring male role norm endorsement (Levant et al., 1992;Mahalik et al., 2003) yield mixed findings. Endorsement of some male role norms (e.g., self-reliance, self-sufficiency) predicts increases in substance use problems and lower rates of health-promoting behaviors (Gerdes & Levant, 2018;Himmelstein & Sanchez, 2016), whereas other male role norms (e.g., emotional control) appear to buffer men from some negative health outcomes (Levant & Wimer, 2014) or simultaneously promote both healthy and unhealthy behaviors (Gerdes & Levant, 2018). ...
... This study demonstrates the usefulness of the PMB as a countrylevel indicator of beliefs about manhood (Bosson et al., 2021). Previous research has established links between individual men's endorsement of male role norms (Levant et al., 1992;Mahalik et al., 2003) or self-ascribed masculinity (Helgeson, 2012;Helgeson & Lepore, 1997 and health outcomes, yielding complex relationships depending on the specific male norms or masculinity constructs under investigation. The current findings are thus impressive because country-level PMB scores reflect a widespread belief, shared by individuals of different genders, about the elusive and tenuous nature of manhood. ...
... Some of these items described behaviors that may be viewed as normatively masculine (e.g., watch sports, work out, be the one to pay on dates, or fight) as well as contexts that have not traditionally been seen as part of the masculine sphere (e.g., express physical affection toward male friends, cry, feel lonely). Although they do not constitute a validated measure (and they do not measure beliefs or attitudes but behaviors), these items are closely aligned with several psychometrically reliable and valid measures of attitude toward traditional masculinity ideology, such as those included under the concept of "normative scales" (Gough & Robertson, 2017): the Male Role Norms Inventory (Levant et al., 1992), the Male Role Norms Scale (Thompson & Pleck, 1986), and, above all, the CMNI , since the latter assesses people's self-perceptions of the extent to which they conform to several masculine norms. An example of the similarity of the content of some items is "How often do you express physical affection to male friends?" (MAffect)" and "Men should never hold hands or show affection toward another" (Male Role Norms Inventory). ...
... Belief-pattern Scale for Attitudes towards Feminism (Kirkpatrick 1936) Attitudes towards feminism Role conception Inventory (Bender Motz 1952) Subjectively conceived husband and wife roles Traditional Family Ideology Scale (Levinson and Huffman 1955) Ideological orientations towards family structure Authoritarian Attitudes Towards Women Scale (Nadler and Morrow 1959) Authoritiarian attitudes towards women Sex-Role Ideology Questionnaire (Mason and Bumpass 1975) Women's sex-role ideology Short Attitudes towards Feminism Scale (Smith, Ferree, and Miller 1975) Acceptance or rejection of central beliefs of feminism Sex-role orientation Scale (Brogan and Kutner 1976) Normative appropriateness of gendered behavior Sex-Role Survey (MacDonald 1976) Support for equality between the sexes The Macho Scale (Villemez and Touhey 1977) Expressions of sexist and egalitarian beliefs Sex-Role Ideology Scale (Kalin and Tilby 1978) Traditional vs. feminist sex-role ideology Sexist Attitudes towards Women Scale (Benson and Vincent 1980) Seven components of sexism towards women Index of Sex-Role Orientation Scale (Dreyer, Woods, and James 1981) Women's sex-role orientation Traditional-Liberated Content Scale (Fiebert 1983) Traditional and liberated male attitudes towards men Beliefs about Women Scale (Belk and Snell 1986) Stereotypic beliefs about women Attitudes towards Sex-roles Scale (Larsen and Long 1988) Attitudes towards egalitarian vs. traditional sex roles Male Role Norm Inventory (Levant and Hirsch 1992) Norms for the male sex-role Attitudes towards Feminism & Women's Movement (Fassinger 1994) Affective attitudes toward the feminist movement Male Role Attitude Scale (Pleck, Sonenstein, and Ku 1994) Attitudes towards male gender roles in adolescent men Gender Attitudes Inventory (Ashmore, Del Boca, and Bilder 1995) Multiple dimensions of gender attitudes Gender-Role Belief Scale (Kerr and Holden 1996) Self-report measure of gender role ideology Stereotypes About Male Sexuality Scale (Snell, Belk, and Hawkins 1998) Stereotypes about male sexuality Ambivalence toward Men Inventory (Glick and Fiske 1999) Hostile and benevolent stereotypes towards men Table 1: Overview of psychological scales measuring sexism and related constructs. The top seven scales represent our initial selection, that we derived our codebook from (cf. section 2.2). ...
Research has focused on automated methods to effectively detect sexism online. Although overt sexism seems easy to spot, its subtle forms and manifold expressions are not. In this paper, we outline the different dimensions of sexism by grounding them in their implementation in psychological scales. From the scales, we derive a codebook for sexism in social media, which we use to annotate existing and novel datasets, surfacing their limitations in breadth and validity with respect to the construct of sexism. Next, we leverage the annotated datasets to generate adversarial examples, and test the reliability of sexism detection methods. Results indicate that current machine learning models pick up on a very narrow set of linguistic markers of sexism and do not generalize well to out-of-domain examples. Yet, including diverse data and adversarial examples at training time results in models that generalize better and that are more robust to artifacts of data collection. By providing a scale-based codebook and insights regarding the shortcomings of the state-of-the-art, we hope to contribute to the development of better and broader models for sexism detection, including reflections on theory-driven approaches to data collection.
... In particular, measures differ in their orientation (i.e., societal norms vs. personal norms) when assessing respondents' internalization of masculine norms (Thompson & Bennett, 2015;Wade, 2015). Among the most widely used measures, the Masculine Role Norms Inventory (MRNI; Levant et al., 1992) assesses the degree to which an individual has internalized general societal beliefs associated with men's traditional roles. Hence, it measures other-oriented adherence to traditional masculinity. ...
... We did not calculate an overall masculinity score because the literature on masculinity has identified different dimensions of traditional masculinity (Levant, 1996;Levant et al., 1992Levant et al., , 2020Mahalik et al., 2003), which we felt might be differentially related to fathering behaviors. Three of the scales, emotional closeness (emotional restrictiveness), attitudes about equality of women (control over women), and division of labor, directly match traditional masculinity dimensions in the literature. ...
This study uses bioecological and identity theories to explore associations among maternal education and employment, fathers’ gender role beliefs and identities, and fathers’ caregiving and nurturing involvement in a Turkish context. The study sample was derived from data collected in 2016 from 1,102 fathers of children between birth and 3 years of age. We used path analysis in structural equation modeling to test direct and indirect associations. Direct paths between maternal education and employment and fathers’ caregiving and nurturing behaviors were not significant; however, some fathers’ gender role beliefs mediated the associations. Modernity beliefs mediated the association between education and caregiving, and fathers’ emotional closeness mediated the association between maternal education and fathers’ nurturing behaviors. Furthermore, maternal employment was indirectly associated with fathers’ caregiving via his beliefs about the equality of sons and daughters and division of labor at home. Father identity development was not associated with maternal education or employment, and only mediated associations between fathers’ beliefs about emotional closeness and their caregiving and nurturing involvement. The current findings suggest that cultural norms and beliefs likely play themselves out via parenting styles and family structures (the microsystems for children), and therefore these family variables may contain very valuable cultural information in understanding the processes of father identity construction, masculinity beliefs, and father involvement behaviors.
The coronavirus pandemic, which emerged in China in late 2019 and spread globally within the first quarter of 2020, literally brought the world to a standstill. Not only did the pandemic affect people’s livelihoods and health, but it also caused a dramatic loss of human lives. As the rates of daily active cases and mortalities increased, so did the fear and anxiety associated with contracting the ‘deadly’ disease. Expressing such fear and anxiety is normal during a pandemic, but one wonders how men are expected to do this, knowing that one of the marks of masculinity is suppression fear, including during crises. Using discursive psychology, this paper examines the conflict between conceptions of manliness and the expression of fear and anxiety among male COVID-19 survivors in Ghana. Via extensive semi-structured interviews with these men, we investigate the (para)linguistic strategies used in the account of their COVID-19 experience, with the view to understand how they navigate the conflict between constructing themselves as ‘men’ (especially before their family and friends) and the fear and anxiety that accompany COVID-19 infections. Findings indicate that although the men generally construct themselves as ‘manly’ by the account of their resilience and bravery during the crisis, their competing arguments, hedges, and inconsistencies point to the suppression of fear and their ideological dilemmas. These can be attributed to their desire to fulfill societal expectations of them as ‘real men’ (i.e., brave, stoic, and resilient).
This article discusses the phenomenon of youth violence from a psychology of gender perspective. Although other factors are discussed—including gun availability, violence-related media influence, family and caretaker factors, and effects of teasing and bullying—the intention is to highlight new thinking on the potential relationship between boys' traditional masculine socialization experiences and violence. In this new perspective, traditional masculine socialization estranges and isolates many boys from their genuine inner lives and vital connections to others, which is theorized to heighten their risk of engaging in acts of violence. The authors identify school and community programs that may be helpful in counteracting damaging socialization experiences and supporting boys' healthier emotional and psychological development. Finally, the article discusses approaches that psychologists and other mental health professionals can use to help address this vital issue.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship of masculine eating/drinking beliefs on male consumers’ concern with unhealthy eating/drinking habits and, in turn, with binge drinking. Additionally, this research tests if and how a change in these beliefs influences binge drinking intention and intention to eat unhealthy food.
Design/methodology/approach
Three studies were conducted in Bogotá (Colombian males; convenience sampling). The purpose of Study 1 (N = 209) was to develop a scale to measure masculine eating/drinking beliefs. Study 2 (N = 191) tested the mediating role of concern with unhealthy eating/drinking habits in the relationship of masculine eating/drinking beliefs with binge drinking. Study 3 (N = 179) was an experimental study, which examined the effect of information about some negative consequences of masculine beliefs on the answers to the masculine eating/drinking beliefs inventory and, in turn, on binge drinking intention and intention to eat unhealthy food.
Findings
A one-dimensional (eight-items) scale was developed and validated. The results of this paper show that masculine eating/drinking beliefs are associated with lower concern with unhealthy eating/drinking and, in turn, with higher binge drinking. Information that influences these beliefs leads to lower binge drinking and unhealthy food ingestion intentions.
Research limitations/implications
This research presents the first scale that measures masculine eating/drinking beliefs. It provides initial evidence on how an intervention focused on the negative consequences of sexism can influence these beliefs, affecting binge drinking and overeating intentions.
Practical implications
This research provides new findings on a topic associated with several health problems in many countries, including the effect on consumers’ weight gaining and related illnesses.
Originality/value
This research presents the first scale that measures masculine eating/drinking beliefs. It provides initial evidence about factors (through mediating variables) that link masculine eating/drinking beliefs with some unhealthy eating/drinking habits. In addition, the results show how information about some negative consequences of these beliefs can influence consumers’ binge drinking and unhealthy food ingestion intentions, which leads to key recommendations for future interventions. As a result, this research provides new findings on a topic associated with several health problems in many countries, including the effect on consumers’ weight gaining and related illnesses.
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