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Levels of well-being among men who are incels (involuntary celibates)
William Costello
College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London
School of Psychology, Swansea University
Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin
Vania Rolon Arevalo
College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London
Andrew G. Thomas
School of Psychology, Swansea University
David Schmitt
College of Health and Life Sciences, Brunel University London
Corresponding author email: william@costello5.com
Total word count: 7262
1
Incels (involuntary celibates) are a sub-culture community of men who build their identity
around their perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. To address the dearth
of primary data collected from incels, this study compared a sample of self-identified male incels
( = 151) with similarly aged non-incel males (= 378) across a range of measures related to
mental well-being. We also examined the role of sociosexuality and the tendency for
interpersonal victimhood as potential moderators of incel status and its links with mental health.
Compared to non-incels, incels had a greater tendency for interpersonal victimhood, higher
levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness, and lower levels of life satisfaction. As predicted,
incels also scored higher on levels of sociosexual desire, but this did not appear to moderate the
relationship between incel status and mental well-being. Tendency for interpersonal victimhood
only moderated the relationship between incel self-identification and loneliness, yet not in the
predicted manner. These findings suggest incels represent a newly identified “at-risk” group to
target for mental health interventions, possibly informed by evolutionary psychology. Potential
applications of the findings for mental health professionals, as well as directions for future
research, are discussed.
Key words: Involuntary Celibate, Well-being, Depression, Sociosexuality, Anxiety, Life Satisfaction
2
“The power to charm the female has sometimes been more important than the power to conquer
other males in battle”
― Charles Darwin,
Incels, or involuntary celibates, are a group comprised of mostly men who forge their sense of
identity around a perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships (Donnelly et al.,
2001). Recent years have seen growing concerns about potential threats of violence stemming
from the incel community (Hoffman & Ware, 2020). A significant minority of incels (~10%) do
engage in misogynistic online-hostility (Jaki et al., 2019), and rare individual-cases have seen
incels lash out in violent rage. Most notable is the notorious case of Elliot Rodger, who in 2014
killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself, referring in his manifesto to a “day
of retribution” when he would kill those whom he most envied (Allely & Faccini, 2017).
The incel community operates almost exclusively online, providing an outlet to express
misogynistic-hostility, frustration and blame toward society for a perceived failure to include
them (Speckhard et al., 2021). There is a need to know more about incels’ experiences,
grievances, and mental health outcomes, yet there is a dearth of primary data collected from
inquiries made to incels themselves, with most academic research focusing on online discourse-
analysis (Jaki et al., 2019; O’Malley et al., 2020). It is unclear how much of incel rhetoric is
performatively antagonistic. However, online misogyny can be used to predict domestic violence
(Blake et al., 2021), and there is evidence that internet “trolls” who are hostile online, are
similarly hostile offline, but may be attracted to evolutionarily-novel online worlds, where
3
aggression-based strategies can be pursued without risking real-world retaliation (Bor &
Peterson, 2019).
The aim of this study was to capture levels of mental well-being among members of the
incel community using an especially broad sample, and to investigate what factors may have a
moderating effect on levels of well-being among members of the incel community. In doing so,
we hope to add to the current literature on incels with a broader sample than previous research,
potentially revealing whether unfulfilled sexual desires or tendencies toward victimhood
undergird any mental health difficulties they may possess. Obtaining primary data on mental
health outcomes and their correlates from direct engagement with self-identified incels is also an
important first step towards informing any potential therapeutic interventions.
A comprehensive literature review on the psychological profile of incels (Stijelja, 2021)
found that before 2014, there was almost no scholarly literature studying incels. What little
research that had been done found incels shared several characteristics with adult virgins and
young adults experiencing late sexual onset, including a significant fear of having irretrievably
“missed out” on meaningful life experiences (Stijelja, 2021). In recent years, research on incels
has grown, examining topics ranging from misogynistic online rhetoric (Byerly, 2020; Jaki et al.,
2019), Big Five personality traits (Bieselt, 2020), to incel pornography-use (Stickel, 2020).
However, Speckhard et al. (2021) note that almost all academic studies which include primary
responses from incels used the same limited data set—an online survey of incels ( = 28) from
the University of Twente in the Netherlands.
4
More recently, larger quantitative studies with samples in excess of 250 have started to
emerge, focusing on incel experiences, grievances, ideology, and prevalence of mental health
diagnoses (Speckhard et al., 2021; Moskalenko et al., 2022). Speckhard and Ellenberg (2022)
conducted a study of 272 self-identified incels and found a higher self-reported prevalence of
formal psychological diagnoses than in the general population. These larger studies worked in
partnership with one specific incel forum; Incels.is, and as such, are missing the perspectives of
incels beyond the users of just one specific, albeit significant, online forum. Daly et al. (2022)
conducted a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with ( = 10) self-identified incels, finding
that participants feel they experience masculinity challenges that affect their romantic
opportunities, perceive themselves as marginalised or treated as “subhuman” due to their
appearance, and as a result, experience negative emotions related to their inceldom, which in turn
affects their misogynistic online hostility.
While Moskalenko et al. (2022) currently has the greatest sample-size ( = 274), incel
research is still in its infancy and stands to benefit from more primary data, particularly from
participants beyond the users of just one specific, significant forum. We attempted to collect such
data here as well as data from a group of similarly-aged non-incel men to allow for direct
comparisons to be made. We used several well-established mental health measures to assess
levels of wellbeing in this group to allow for comparisons to be made with the general population
or other groups in future studies.
The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV; Gabay et al., 2020) describes an
ongoing feeling that the self is a victim, a feeling that becomes central to one’s identity. Those
with a perpetual victimhood-mindset tend to have an “external locus of control” and believe
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one’s life is entirely under the control of forces outside of oneself. The TIV is comprised of four
dimensions: : the preoccupation with having the legitimacy of grievances
acknowledged, the belief that the individual or their ingroup behaves more
morally than others, : the belief that because of their victimization, an individual
cares less about the pain of others, and : the preoccupation with reflecting on past
instances of victimization. The “incelosphere” can be characterised as a “fatalistic, misogynistic
echo-chamber in which misery and failure are celebrated”, emblematic of all four dimensions of
the victimhood-mindset (Kates, 2021). Brzuszkiewicz (2020) suggests that most incels take an
external locus of control to the extreme in perceptions of themselves and inter-sex relations.
Many incels subscribe to a philosophy or worldview known as the “black-pill”, denoting a
willingness to as opposed to the of taking the
“blue-pill”. The “black-pill” describes a particularly bleak “ to swallow; in this case, the
belief that sexual-attraction is mostly fixed and that there is nothing that incels can do to improve
their romantic-prospects (Glace et al., 2021). Thus, incels can be expected to score highly on the
TIV. Additionally, this study sought to investigate whether the TIV would have a moderating
effect on levels of well-being, for incels as well as non-incels, i.e., do individuals with a high
TIV have worse mental health outcomes than those who do not.
: Men who self-identify as incel will have a greater tendency for interpersonal
victimhood than non-incel men.
TIV will moderate the relationship between incel status and wellbeing, such that a
greater tendency for interpersonal victimhood will negatively impact wellbeing for incels more
strongly than for non-incels.
6
Incels often show signs of low well-being, such as depression and suicidality (Jones, 2020;
Romano, 2018). Still, Stijelja’s (2021) comprehensive literature review found that while mental
health issues are prominent points of discussion on incel forums, they have not received the same
attention as themes of misogyny. Outside of Speckhard and Ellenberg (2022) and Daly and
Laskovtsov (2021) examining potentiality for self-harm and suicidality on incel sub-Reddit
posts, there is little academic research investigating incel mental health, despite romantic
relationships being a robust predictor of mental well-being (Pietromonaco & Beck, 2019; Raque-
Bogdan et al., 2011), and negative relations between depressive symptoms and assessment of
one’s own mate value (Kirsner et al., 2003).
Apostolou et al. (2019) found that people who indicated
experienced more negative emotions such as sadness and loneliness, and fewer positive emotions
such as happiness and excitement, and lower life satisfaction. Van De Velde et al. (2010) found
that being single was a large risk factor for high levels of depression in men, and Brody (2010)
found that psychological function was positively correlated (sometimes showing a causational
relationship) with penile-vaginal intercourse. Incels experience poor mating performance, so can
be predicted to have lower levels of well-being compared to non-incels.
Internal surveys conducted by the incel forum Incels.co (2020) show that 74.1% of
respondents reported that they suffer from anxiety and 67.5% from depression. These data are
concerning given the relationship between suicide-risk and depression and anxiety in men
(Bjerkeset et al, 2018). Several studies have found that themes of loneliness, hopelessness and
depression pervade incel forums (Høiland, 2019; Regehr, 2020), with many members openly
discussing suicidal plans online (Baele et al., 2019; Cottee, 2020; Daly & Laskovtsov, 2021;
Glace et al., 2021; Hoffman et al., 2020; Jaki et al., 2019; Jones, 2020; Maxwell et al., 2020;
7
Rubertsson, 2019; Williams, 2020). It should not be surprising that an Incels.co survey (2020)
indicated that 82.3% of incels reported to have considered suicide.
Compared to non-incel men, men who self-identify as incel will report lower
levels of well-being, including higher levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness, along with
lower levels of life satisfaction.
!"#
Sociosexual orientation refers to individual differences in the willingness to engage in sexual
activity outside of a committed relationship (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991). It is comprised of
three dimensions, including sociosexual behaviours, attitudes and desires, with individuals
varying from more “restricted” on the low end to more “unrestricted” on the high end of
sociosexual orientation (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008). Incels are, by virtue of their inceldom,
relatively restricted in their sociosexual behaviours, but may still score high in sociosexual
desires (Passman, 2020), with some research demonstrating that individuals who are not in a
romantic relationship experience greater sociosexual desires (Del Rio et al., 2019). Grello et al.
(2006) found that casual sex is associated with less depression for male college-students, and
sociosexually unrestricted students reported higher levels of well-being after casual sex
(Vrangalova & Ong, 2014). However, for incels, having high levels of sociosexual desire, while
ruminating on a perceived inability to act on that desire, could have deleterious effects on well-
being. Michalos (1985) found that discrepancies between sociosexual desire and behaviour result
in lower levels of subjective well-being. Thus, this study makes the following predictions:
$Men who self-identify as incels will score higher on sociosexual desires than non-
incel men.
8
% Sociosexual desires will moderate the relationship between incel versus non-incel
identity and well-being, such that greater levels of sociosexual desire will negatively impact
wellbeing for incels more strongly than for non-incels.
&!'"
Given the dearth of primary data available from self-identified incels, the current research
sought to ask some additional exploratory questions to help better understand the complexion of
the incelosphere, and to guide future research. Many commentators describe the incelosphere as
adjacent to far-right or white supremacist movements (Bates, 2020; Srinivasan, 2021), and Julian
(2018) suggests that one contributing reason why young people may be having less sex is
because of an increased tendency to remain living with their parents into adulthood. Some of the
exploratory findings in this study include the number of incels who report living with self-
reported mental and physical conditions, education levels, employment status, living
arrangements, political affiliation, adherence to blackpill ideology, belief in the permanency of
inceldom, and frequency of pornography use. We also asked whether individual incels used
online forums or not, and the participant’s perception of the effect of forum use on their levels of
wellbeing, so that we could compare the two subgroups of forum using and non-forum using
incels.
(
Participants were recruited using social media snowball-sampling for a study advertised
as “Exploring attitudes and behaviours around sexuality, wellbeing and identity.” No
compensation was offered for participation.
9
In total, 783 people responded to the survey, with several degrees of completion. Because
the incel community is almost exclusively male and our study focused on incel vs non-incel
group differences in mental health, only participants who were biologically male and had
completed the incel identification item were kept, resulting in a final sample of 529 males (age =
31.75, SDage = 9.63), of which 151 self-identified as incel (age = 28.14, SDage = 7.59). Incels
were somewhat younger ( = 27.94, = 7.26) than were non-incels ( = 32.98, = 9.66),
(351.08) = -6.44, < .001, = .59, 95% [-6.57, -3.50]. Regarding ethnicity, 71.83% of
the total sample identified as White/Caucasian, 9.64% as mixed, 6.99% as South/Southeast
Asian, 3.40% as Black, 2.84% as Other, 2.08% as Latino, 1.70% as Middle Eastern, and 1.51%
as East Asian. The majority of participants lived in the US (39.70%), while 22.12% lived in the
UK and 36.86% lived in other countries (with the remaining 1.32% skipping the question). A full
breakdown of demographics for all men, as well as incel and non-incel subgroups can be found
in the appendix.
("
The Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood Scale (Gabay et al., 2020) is comprised of
four dimensions: need for recognition (e.g., “It makes me angry when people don't believe that I
was hurt,” 6 items, α = .88), moral elitism (e.g., “I think I am much more conscientious and
moral in my relations with other people compared to their treatment of me,” 6 items, α = 82),
lack of empathy (e.g., “People who are offended by me are only thinking of themselves,” 6
items, α = .85) and rumination (e.g., “I am flooded by more anger than I would like every time I
remember people who hurt me,” 4 items, α = .92). Items are scored on a five-point Likert scale
10
and can be averaged into a composite score (α = .91), with higher scores corresponding to greater
TIV scores.
The Sociosexual Desire (SOI-D) dimension of the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory –
Revised (SOI-R) (Penke & Asendorpf, 2008) is a 3-item measure used to assess individual
differences in the desire to have casual, uncommitted sexual relationships. Participants were
asked to indicate on a 1-9 scale the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with three
statements, e.g., “!""#
"$”. Reliability tests resulted in a Cronbach’s α
= .79.
The PHQ-9 is a nine-item questionnaire used to diagnose depression (Kroenke et al.,
2001). Participants are asked to think about their feelings over the last two weeks, and to indicate
on a scale of “0” (not at all) to “3” (nearly every day) how often they have been experiencing a
certain feeling (e.g., how often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless?)
during those last two weeks. Due to an error with the questionnaire, participants were not asked
the question on suicidal ideation. Reliability tests resulted in a Cronbach’s α of .90.
! !"
The GAD-7 (Spitzer et al., 2006) is a brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety
disorder. A total score is calculated by assigning scores of 0, 1, 2, and 3, to the response
categories of “not at all”, “several days”, “more than half the days”, and “nearly every day”
respectively, and summing the scores for the seven questions (e.g., !"
11
"#$). Scores of 5, 10, and 15 are taken as the cut-off points for
mild, moderate and severe anxiety, respectively. Reliability tests resulted in a Cronbach’s α
of .94.
#
This scale is comprised of three questions (e.g., “How often do you feel that you lack
companionship?”, α = .84) designed to capture loneliness (Hughes et al., 2004). Response
categories were coded as 1 ("), 2 (), and 3 ().
$#
The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS; Diener et al., 1985) is a five-item (e.g., “The
conditions of my life are excellent,” α = .91) seven-point Likert response scale designed to
measure cognitive judgments of satisfaction with one’s life, with higher scores corresponding to
greater satisfaction. Scores on the SWLS have been shown to correlate with measures of mental-
health and be predictive of future behaviours such as suicide-attempts (Pavot & Diener, 2008).
A single yes-no choice item (i.e., “do you identify as incel (involuntarily celibate)?”)
assessed whether participants self-identified as incels. Participants were also asked various
demographic questions including country of residence, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation,
education, and employment status. In addition, they were also asked questions about their mate
preferences, including their own minimum preferences across 15 traits a potential partner would
need to satisfy, as well as their perceptions of the minimum standards they perceived women
generally expect. These were asked as part of a separate study and so are not reported here.
"
12
Participants gave full informed consent prior to participating in the study. First,
demographic information was taken. Next, participants completed the above questionnaires in
the following order, SOI-D, TIV, mate value, depression, anxiety, loneliness, and satisfaction
with life. Finally, participants were given a full debrief. The study took approximately 25
minutes to complete and was approved by [redacted for peer review] ethics committee.
)"
%&''&&&
For all of our measures, we allowed participants to skip questions that they did not want
to answer or made them feel uncomfortable. While the mental health questionnaires allow for
aggregate scores for the purpose of diagnosis (e.g., a patient being administered the PHQ9 for
their doctor to assess whether to refer them to mental health services), such scores can be
sensitive to missing data. Listwise deletion solves this issue, but also decreases the sample size
for group comparisons. Thus, to keep our power high, we instead opted to use mean scores to
alleviate the impact of missing data.Table 1 shows means, standard deviations, and several
inferential statistics for group differences between incels and non-incels for all variables
described.
'
Incel males ( = 3.28, = 0.76) scored significantly higher than did non-incel males
( = 2.84, = 0.59) on the TIV overall score, (196) = 5.97, < .001, = 0.64, as well as
across all dimensions of interpersonal victimhood. Most of these differences were small to
moderate in effect size. Thus, support was found for Hypothesis 1 (see Table 1).
%$(&
13
A series of independent samples -tests using Bonferroni corrections and t-statistics not
assuming homogeneity of variance where needed, revealed male incels scored significantly
higher than did male non-incels on depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Incels also scored
significantly lower on life satisfaction than did non-incels. Thus, Hypothesis 3 was supported.
*(+,+#*-#
./0%1#,./0$1*-,"
#""+","*
Dimension
Incel men Non-incel men
()() % &'(
Need for recognition 3.36 (1.02, = 129) 3.02 (.91, = 311) 3.45 438 < .003 [.14, .54] .35
Moral elitism 3.50 (.85, = 128) 3.05 (.70, = 308) 5.18 202.25 < .001 [.27, .61] .56
Lack of empathy 2.78 (1.03, = 121) 2.45 (.78, = 289) 3.08 180.45 <.01 [.12, .52] .35
Rumination 3.33 (1.24, = 115) 2.61 (1.14, = 264) 5.50 377 < .001 [.46, .99] .60
Overall TIV 3.28 (.76, = 130) 2.84 (.59, = 317) 5.87 195.95 < .001 [.29, .59] .64
"
Depression 1.94 (.71, = 112) 1.35 (.80, = 259) 6.73 369 < .001 [.42, .75] .78
Anxiety 1.61 (.88, = 108) 1.09 (.79, = 242) 5.25 186.97 < .001 [.33, .71] .62
Loneliness 2.66 (.43, = 111) 2.14 (.62, = 240) 9.08 294.73 < .001 [.41, .63] .97
Satisfaction with life 2.66 (1.33, = 104) 3.97 (1.49, = 266) -7.78 368 < .001 [-1.61, -.99] .92
!" 5.38 (2.18, = 134) 4.82 (1.94, = 320) 2.59 226.31 < .01 [.15, .99] .27
* Given incels were significantly younger than were non-incels, a series of regressions with age and incel-identification as predictors were run
to assess how results would change when controlling for age. The effects of incel self-identification after controlling for age remained
significant in all cases except for need for recognition, where, after applying Bonferroni corrections, the effect became marginally significant
at = .07. Thus, in the interest of parsimony, we report results for independent sample t-tests.
In addition to examining mean differences, because the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 clinically
diagnose people into different categories of depression and anxiety respectively, we investigated
whether incels would be more likely to be categorised as highly depressed and anxious than
would be expected by chance (see Appendix/Table 4 & 5). New categorical variables
14
aggregating scores with listwise deletion were created for depression and anxiety, resulting in
five and four categories, respectively.
Incels were more likely to be categorised as having “moderately severe depression”
(45.68%) compared to non-incels (17.42%), )*(4, = 213) = 40.21, < .001. Similarly, 41.77%
of incels fell under the “severe anxiety” category, compared to 18.46% of non-incels, )*(3, =
209) = 18.51, < .001. This was also consistent with Hypothesis 3.
!"
Supporting Hypothesis 4, male incels had greater levels of sociosexual desire than did
non-incels, though the effect size was small (see Table 1). To test Hypotheses 5 and 2, we first
ran correlations between sociosexual desire, TIV, and mental health measures (see Table 2).
Desire and TIV both positively correlated with depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Desire had no
significant correlation with life satisfaction, but TIV did negatively correlate with the latter.
*/#"+!"+
,2%3,*
Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6
1. Depression
2. Anxiety .74**
[.68, .78]
3. Loneliness .58** .47**
[.51, .65] [.39, .55]
4. Satisfaction with life -.47** -.36** -.54**
[-.55, -.39] [-.45, -.26] [-.61, -.46]
5. SOI desire .18** .24** .15** -.05
[.08, .28] [.13, .34] [.05, .25] [-.15, .06]
6. TIV .46** .49** .43** -.28** .24**
[.38, .54] [.40, .56] [.34, .51] [-.37, -.18] [.15, .32]
** < .01, *** < .001
15
Next, we conducted moderated regressions to examine whether the relationship between
incel identification and the negative wellbeing measures depended on sociosexual desire and
TIV. Mahalanobis distances greater than )*(4) = 18.47 were used to identify participants as
multivariate outliers (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007). After removing these scores, we regressed
each of the mental health outcomes on incel identification, sociosexual desire, TIV, and the
interaction terms of incel identification*sociosexual desire and incel identification*TIV. All
predictors were entered in the same step and the R supernova package (version 2.4.4) was used
to extract the change in R square of the interaction terms. Interaction terms between incel
identification and sociosexual desire were not significant for any of the mental wellbeing
outcomes. Thus, the prediction that greater levels of sociosexual desire would negatively impact
wellbeing for incels more strongly than for non-incels was not supported. Regarding incel
identification and TIV, the interaction for loneliness was significant (= -.22, + = -.56, = .02,
&'( [-.39, -.05]), although it only accounted for 2% of the variability in loneliness.
Probing the interaction with the probemod package (0.2.1.) revealed that, for incels, greater TIV
scores were associated with greater loneliness (= .17, , = .08, = .03); however, the
same effect was found more strongly for non-incel men (= .39, , = .05, < .001). Table
3 shows standardised coefficients, as well as the variance in wellbeing outcomes accounted for
by the interactions of incel identification and sociosexual desire, and incel identification and
TIV.
16
17
* .41+!"++
*)*+#,#""*
β β β - β. β. - /*0/*. 0/*. -
Depression .48* .04 .46*** .12 -.42 ϯ .27*** .002 .009
Anxiety .32 .08 .45*** .08 -.26 .26*** .001 .004
Loneliness .73*** .01 .44*** .09 -.56* .28*** .001 .02
Satisfaction with life -.64** .04 -.26*** -.02 .36 .18*** < .001 .006
ϯ< .10, * < .05, ** < .01, *** < .001
* Adding age into the moderating models to control for it did not alter results significantly for any constructs. Thus, we
report the moderations without age.
18
&!
Beyond our main hypotheses, we ran exploratory analyses comparing incel and non-incel
men on variables such as living with self-reported mental and physical conditions, education,
employment status, living arrangements, political affiliation, relationship seeking, adherence to
blackpill ideology, belief in the permanency of inceldom, and attitudes towards having cosmetic
surgery.
Greater proportions of incel men reported living with a clinically undiagnosed (24%)
mental condition than would be expected by chance, compared to 12.73% of non-incel men,
respectively, )*(2) = 22.57, < .001 (see appendix/table 6). While similar proportions of incel
and non-incel men held an undergraduate degree, a greater proportion of incel men (36%) than
would be expected by chance had a secondary (high school) level education or lower, compared
to 19.89% of non-incel men, )*(2) = 18.29, < .001 (see appendix/table 8). More incels
(17.33%) than non-incels (9.02%) also reported being NEET (not in education, employment or
training), )*(1) = 6.55, = .01, (see appendix/table 9).
When looking at the proportions of white vs BIPOC (black, indigenous or people of
colour) participants, a smaller proportion of incels than would be expected by chance identified
as white (63.58%) as opposed to those identifying as BIPOC (36.42%), X2(1) = 6.56, p = .01.
Regarding living arrangements, a smaller proportion of incels than expected were cohabiting
with either a housemate or romantic partner (13.79%), and a significantly greater proportion
were living with parents or a caregiver (50.34%), compared to 44.74% and 26.95% of non-
incels, respectively, )*(2) = 46.68, < .001, (see appendix/table 10). In relation to political
orientation, independent sample t-tests revealed no differences between incel (= 2.94, =
1.44) and non-incel men (= 2.93, = 1.41), (486) = .01, = .99, &'( [-.27, .28],
19
with 38.85% of incels reporting a right-leaning political orientation compared to 37.82% of non
incels, and 44.70% of incels reporting a left leaning political affiliation compared to 43.70% of
non incels. 17.47% of incels compared to 17.27% of non incels reported a centrist political
affiliation (see appendix/table 11).
When looking at single men only, incels (= 3.33, = 1.44) reported greater
relationship seeking than did non-incels (= 2.77, = 1.32), (302) = 3.55, < .001,
&'( [.25, .88] = .41, 1= .97. One-sample t-tests revealed no significant difference
from µ = 3 (neither agree or disagree) regarding subjective perception of increased wellbeing for
incels who used forums, or from 2 = 3 (neutral) regarding adherence to the blackpill ideology.
However, the incel sample mean for belief in permanency of inceldom ( = 3.38, = 1.00)
was significantly different from 2 = 3 (not sure), (136) = 4.44, < .001, = .38, indicating a
general belief among incels that their situation will be permanent.
&!#5
We explored the effects of greater weekly porn use, online-forum participation, and
blackpill and inceldom permanency beliefs on the mental wellbeing measures of incels (i.e.,
excluding non-incels from these specific analyses). Belief in permanent inceldom significantly
predicted mean depression scores (= .16, , = .08, = .04), while weekly porn use was a
marginally significant predictor (= .03, , = .01, = .07). Forum use predicted mean anxiety
(= .38, , = .18, = .04), with greater blackpill belief as a marginal predictor (= .12, ,
= .07, = .08). There were no significant or marginal predictors for mean loneliness. Finally,
belief in permanent inceldom negatively predicted satisfaction with life (= -.35, , = .15,
= .02), while a one-sample t-test revealed no significant difference from 2= 3 (neither agree or
disagree) regarding subjective perception of increased wellbeing for incels who used forums.
20
6"
This study found that incels, compared to non-incels, have a significant tendency for higher
levels of interpersonal victimhood, higher levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness, and lower
levels of life satisfaction (see Table 1). Roughly 58% of male incels in our sample reported
living with a diagnosed (34%) or undiagnosed (24%) mental-health condition, compared to
35.81% of non incels (see Appendix/Table 6), and 75.31% of incels could be categorized as
either severely or moderately depressed, compared to 32.57% of non incels (see appendix/table
4). Regarding anxiety levels, 41.77% of incels could be categorized as severely anxious,
compared to 18.46% of non incels (see Appendix/Table 5).
We predicted that, for incels, having higher levels of sociosexual desire, while ruminating
on their perceived inability to act on that desire, would be associated with low levels of
wellbeing. Though incels scored higher on levels of sociosexual desire, this was not found to
moderate the relationship between incel status and mental health as predicted. Sociosexual desire
correlated with depression, anxiety, and loneliness, although sociosexual desire had no
significant correlation with life satisfaction (see Table 2). However, the prediction that greater
levels of sociosexual desire would negatively impact wellbeing for incels more strongly than for
non-incels was not supported (see Table 3). The tendency for interpersonal victimhood (TIV)
predicted low levels of well-being for incels and non incels alike. Regarding incel identification
and TIV, the interaction for loneliness was significant, although it only accounted for 2% of the
variability in loneliness, for incels, greater TIV scores were associated with greater loneliness;
however, the same effect was found more strongly for non-incel men (see Table 3).
In addition, we found a specific demographic profile – incels were ethnically and
politically diverse, significantly more likely to be NEET (not in education employment or
21
training), unemployed, lower educated, and still living with their parents (see Appendix), which
may in turn have deleterious effects on their ability to form romantic relationships.
Typically, a surplus population of unpartnered young men disproportionately harm
society and themselves, due to increased levels of status seeking and risk taking, in what is
referred to as “young male syndrome” (Edlund et al., 2013; Guttentag & Secord, 1983; Krahn et
al., 1986; Wilson & Daly, 1985). In China, substantially skewed sex-ratios have left large
surpluses of unpartnered young men relative to young women (Hudson & den Boer, 2004; Zhu et
al., 2009), resulting in rises in violent crime (Edlund et al., 2013), and deteriorating male mental-
health (Zhou & Hesketh, 2017), while there is accumulating evidence from criminology for the
sexual frustration theory of aggression, violence, and crime (Lankford, 2021).
Together with previous findings showing that incels are reluctant to access mental health
support (Speckhard et al., 2021), our findings suggest that incels can be considered a high risk
and hard-to-reach group. Incels may encounter financial barriers to accessing mental health
support because of their increased likelihood of being NEET (not in education employment or
training), as well as being disincentivized by the cynicism towards mental health interventions
often expressed in their community (Speckhard et al., 2021).
Any potential mental health interventions should also take into consideration our findings
around the tendency for interpersonal victimhood, which predicted low levels of wellbeing
among incels and non incels alike. This dimension of personality could present obstacles to
incels engaging with the therapeutic process. One dimension of the tendency for interpersonal
victimhood is the , referring to a preoccupation with having the legitimacy
22
of grievances acknowledged. Mental health professionals who are overly challenging toward
incel clients run the risk of alienating incels who may feel their experiences are not seen as valid.
One of the strongest predictors of whether a mental health intervention will be effective, or not,
is the strength of the relationship between therapist and client, and creating rapport is essential
(Finsrud et al., 2022).
Another dimension of the tendency for interpersonal victimhood is that of , the
preoccupation with reflecting on past instances of victimization. Our findings around incels’
greater tendency to ruminate is consistent with our findings around incels’ higher levels of
depression, as depression puts an individual’s mind into a state of rumination, which affects the
ability to think in a goal-oriented manner (Alderman et al., 2015).
There is some debate about the adaptive properties of rumination within the evolutionary
literature (Kennair et al., 2017). The analytical rumination hypothesis (Andrews & Thompson,
2009; Watson & Andrews, 2002) describes a theory of how rumination and depressive symptoms
provide solutions to complex social problems and, therefore, should be promoted rather than
treated. However, Pedersen et al. (2022) provides evidence that metacognition (how people think
about their thinking) is related to the development and maintenance of depressive symptoms.
This is consistent with research finding significant improvements among patients who underwent
metacognitive therapy for depression, which focuses on minimizing rumination (Hagen et al.,
2017). The patients involved in the study were treated over a ten-week period, and after six
months, 80 percent had achieved full recovery from their depression diagnosis, and results from
a three year follow up study (Solem et al., 2020) suggest that the treatment had long-lasting
benefits.
23
Those with a victimhood-mindset tend to have an “external locus of control”, believing
that their life is entirely under the control of forces outside of themselves (Gabay, 2020). Helping
incels to cultivate an internal locus of control – a belief that they can affect change toward their
own predicament, could be an avenue of exploration in helping to challenge any fatalistic
thinking about the permanency of their predicament within incel individuals. Our findings
highlight that belief about the permanency of inceldom significantly predicted high levels of
depression. Cultivating an internal locus of control could help improve incel mental wellbeing.
!"#
Incels are by virtue of their inceldom restricted in their sociosexual behaviour. Due to
previous research showing that sociosexually unrestricted students reported higher well-being
after casual-sex (Vrangalova & Ong, 2014), and other evidence that discrepancies between
sociosexual-desire and behaviour results in lower-levels of subjective-wellbeing (Michalos,
1985), this study predicted that for incels, having high-levels of sociosexual-desire, while
ruminating on their perceived inability to act on that desire, would have deleterious-effects on
wellbeing. Although incels scored significantly higher than non incels on sociosexual desire, this
did not appear to moderate the relationship between incel status and mental wellbeing. One
interpretation of our findings is that it is incels’ perceived inability to realise their mating goals
that leads to poor mental health outcomes, regardless of whether those mating goals are for short
term or long-term mating.
*
It is possible that some incels experience some positives from the social identity of
inceldom. The (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) refers to the idea that humans
24
have a fundamental motivation to be accepted into relationships with others and to be a part of
social groups. For some, incel identity may provide a sense of fraternity (Crimando, 2019),
virtuous victimhood identity (Ok et al., 2021), a common enemy, a rich lexicon of humorous in-
group terminology, as well as an excuse to not participate in the mating-market (Costello, 2020).
Lindner (2022) uses an evolutionary psychology lens to categorize the incel movement as
#. Idriss et al. (2009) found that online support groups can
have benefits on feelings of subjective well-being, and Speckhard et al. (2021) revealed that
incels had several reasons for participating on forums, with roughly three quarters of incels
reporting that the forum made them ‘’feel understood”, provided ‘’a sense of belonging’’ or
made them ‘’feel less lonely’’, but a little over half reported that the forum made them ‘’feel
hopeless’’. However, our exploratory findings suggest forum use predicted greater self-reported
anxiety among incels. Furthermore, the mean perception of increased subjective wellbeing for
incels who did participate in forums was no different from 0 or from a neutral effect, with only
26% of incels reporting to using forums, and only 37% of those saying using forums made their
wellbeing “much” or “somewhat” better (compared to 39% not being sure, and 24% thinking it
has worsened their wellbeing). Belief in permanency of inceldom did show a small-to-moderate
effect whereby the sample mean leaned towards believing in permanency, with only
approximately 20 percent indicating they do not believe they will be involuntarily celibate for the
rest of their life. Belief in the permanency of inceldom significantly predicted depression and
low life satisfaction in incels.
Future research should further examine whether forum-use exacerbates feelings of
hopelessness (Stijelja, 2021), or alternatively, buffers against feelings of low wellbeing for some.
Interventions should include models of acceptance to deal with frustration and exclusion (Miller,
25
1995), potential avenues to overcome obstacles to forming romantic relationships, such as
improving their “mating intelligence” (Geher & Kaufman, 2013), and identification and
challenging of cognitive distortions in thinking. Importantly, this should include an
understanding of the mating ecology conditions contributing to incels’ predicament (Brooks et
al., 2022).
&(,
In concert with this study’s findings, Speckhard et al. (2021) found that many incels
report experiencing lower levels of mental health, but also found they are loath to seek help from
mental health professionals, citing a general mistrust about the usefulness of the mental health
system. We suggest that therapeutic interventions designed to target incels would benefit from
being led by mental health professionals who have knowledge of evolutionary psychology (Buss
& Abrams, 2016; Nesse, 2005). Brooks et al. (2022) outline how the misogyny of incel men and
their tendency to hyperbolically co-opt ideas from evolutionary psychology leads some authors
to unfairly dismiss the field (e.g., O’Malley et al., 2020; Van Valkenburgh, 2018). We suggest
that unfair dismissals of evolutionary psychology are illustrative of the “moralistic fallacy”,
where some of evolutionary psychology’s findings are rejected on the basis of being considered
morally unpalatable (Gorelik & Shackelford, 2017). Unfairly dismissing evolutionary
psychology risks alienating incels who may consider themselves being unfairly pressed to doubt
their own reality and the sincerity of the challenges they face in attracting a romantic partner. For
instance, there is robust evidence from evolutionary psychology that women do indeed value
socioeconomic status in a romantic partner. Using a 45-country sample ( = 14,399), Walter et
al. (2020) found that cross-culturally women typically prefer mates with financial prospects.
Additionally, using cross cultural data from 1.8 million online daters from 24 countries, Jonason
26
and Thomas (2022) found that resource-acquisition ability (as indicated by education and
income) improved the attention received for men by almost 2.5x that of women. These data
suggest that our findings that incels are significantly more likely to be NEET (not in education
employment or training), and still living with their parents, do indeed present significant
challenges to them forming romantic relationships. Brooks et al. (2022) found that mating
ecologies with high income-inequality, male biased sex ratios and low gender pay-gaps predicted
high-levels of online incel activity, concluding that there is some evidence that incels are at least
partly accurate about the socioeconomic drivers contributing to their plight. Additionally, there is
some evidence of a modern “sex-recession” disproportionately affecting young men with lower
income (Lehman, 2019, Ueda et al., 2020).
Mental health professionals with a knowledge of, and respect for, evolutionary
psychology, are uniquely placed to build rapport with incels, while also providing appropriate
challenge against any hyperbolic misappropriation of evolutionary psychology concepts.
Additionally, evidence shows that in order for any interventions against radicalization to be
effective, it is important that they come from “credible insiders” (Ellefsen & Sandberg, 2022).
Mental health professionals who lack knowledge of evolutionary psychology are likely to be
dismissed by incels as lacking in credibility.
Many commentators describe the incelosphere as adjacent to far-right or white-
supremacist movements (Bates, 2020; Srinivasan, 2021), however, the present findings are
demonstrative of diversity of ethnicity and political-affiliation within the incelosphere. Not only
were there no differences in political orientation between incels and non-incels, but just 38.85
percent of incels reported to have a right leaning political affiliation, compared to 44.70 percent
27
reporting a left-leaning affiliation. The political-affiliations and beliefs of incels should be
examined further, to clarify or challenge assumptions that the community is “far right”. Further,
our findings suggest that incels are not disproportionately white, with fewer incels than would be
expected by chance (63.58%) reporting to be white, compared to 36.42 percent reporting to be
BIPOC (see Appendix/Table 11). Jaki et al. (2019) used a dictionary-based approach to identify
posts on the incel forum Incels.co with keywords that constitute racism, finding that just three
percent could be considered racist. Although extreme racialised derogatory slang can be seen
throughout the incelosphere, Peltzer et al. (2021) found that “self-hatred” is a significantly more
common form of “toxic language” in the forum Incels.co. Our findings support Jaki et al.’s
(2019) conclusions that incels are an ethnically heterogeneous group. The racist language may be
an example of performative “trolling” (Hoffman et al., 2020), or the actions of an extreme
minority of incels. Jaki et al. (2019) indicated that only a minority of users (~10%) in incel
forums were responsible for the vast majority of the hateful content. Pelzer et al. (2021)
concluded that the racism on incel forums is not comparable to white-supremacist forums.
A significant finding in this study was the extent to which incels reported to be NEET
(not in education employment or training), lower-educated, or still living with their parents (see
Appendix). Roughly 17 percent of incels (compared to only nine percent of non-incels) reported
to be NEET. Given the premium that women do indeed place on status, education and economic
success when selecting a mate (Hopcroft, 2021; Parker et al., 2021; Walter et al., 2021),
improving the material-conditions of men’s lives through education, housing and employment,
might help them to form romantic relationships, and thus improve their mental wellbeing, while
simultaneously widening the pool of eligible men for higher-educated women to select from.
Additionally, unemployment and precarious employment, are risk factors for adverse mental
28
health outcomes including depression, substance abuse, and suicide, and these risk factors appear
to have a stronger impact on the mental health of men than women (Whitley, 2021).
7/"
One limitation of the present work is that it relies on incel self-identification rather than
“incel-typical” behaviour and cognition, leaving the possibility that some participants with incel-
tendencies identified as non-incels. Future research should focus on developing and
psychometrically validating a level of inceldom scale, so that studies need not rely on subjective
self-identification. A potential use of the level of inceldom scale is that it may help characterize
those who do not identify as incel but may pose a risk to themselves or others due to similarly
fatalistic thinking. This study suggests there may be levels of incel identity ranging from hostile
to benevolent.
Incels are characterized by high-levels of depression, loneliness, anxiety and sociosexual-
desire, with low levels of life-satisfaction and a tendency for interpersonal victimhood. Although
incels appear to be politically and ethnically diverse, they are significantly more likely to be
NEET (not in education employment or training) and live with their parents.
There is some evidence that incels are at least partly accurate in their assessment of the
modern socioeconomic drivers that contribute to their inability to form sexual and romantic
relationships. Our data suggest that incels represent a newly identified hard-to-reach and
potentially at-risk group, suitable for targeted mental health interventions. It is imperative that
therapeutic interventions do not risk alienating incels by unfairly dismissing the field of
evolutionary psychology. Furthermore, mental health practitioners could benefit from an
29
evolutionary-psychology-informed understanding of the problems incels face and represent in
society.
3
This research was initially undertaken as part of the lead author’s dissertation during his MSc in
Psychology, Culture and Evolution at Brunel University 2021. Schmitt, D acted as dissertation
supervisor throughout the project.
Costello, W: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Investigation,
Project administration, Writing (original draft)
Rolon, V: Data curation, Formal Analysis, Methodology, Writing (review and editing)
Thomas, A: Supervision, Writing (review and editing)
Schmitt, D: Supervision, Conceptualization, Writing (review and editing)
All authors approved the final manuscript for submission.
Code: https://github.com/vrolo001/psych_of_incels
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$*/*-
#*88%#,"9*:9*
No
depression
Mild
depression
Moderate
depression
Moderately
severe
depression
Severe
depression
Incels
Observed 3 7 10 37 24
Expected 13.31 14.83 13.31 22.82 16.73
Row % 3.70% 8.64% 12.34% 45.68% 29.63%
Non-
incels
Observed 32 32 25 23 20
Expected 21.69 24.17 21.69 37.18 27.27
Row % 24.24% 24.24% 18.94% 17.42% 15.15%
|Adj. res| *2 *:; 1.26 $*$% 2.53
%*/!*-
#*88;#,"9*<9*
No anxiety Mild anxiety
Moderate
anxiety
Severe
anxiety
Incels
Observed 16 10 20 33
Expected 26.08 13.98 17.39 21.55
Row % 20.25% 12.66% 25.32% 41.77%
Non-incels
Observed 53 27 26 24
Expected 42.92 23.01 28.61 35.45
Row % 40.77% 20.77% 20.00% 18.46%
|Adj. res| *8; 1.49 0.89 *;<
;*/#
*-#
*88:#,"9*;$9*
45
No condition
Yes, clinically
diagnosed
Yes,
undiagnosed
Incels
Observed 63 51 36
Expected 86.81 39.28 23.91
Row % 42.00% 34.00% 24.00%
Non-incels
Observed 242 87 48
Expected 218.19 98.72 60.09
Row % 64.19% 23.08% 12.73%
|Adj. res| $*;% 2.57 *2
:*/"*
-#*88:#
,"9*;$9*
Secondary or
less Undergraduate
Graduate or
higher
Incels
Observed 54 63 33
Expected 36.72 64.90 48.39
Row % 36.00% 42.00% 22.00%
Non-incels
Observed 75 165 137
Expected 92.28 163.10 121.61
Row % 19.89% 43.77% 36.34%
|Adj. res| *:: 0.37 *:
2*/
*-#
*8#,"9*%89*
non-NEET NEET
Incels
Observed 124 26
Expected 132.92 17.08
Row % 82.67% 17.33%
Non-incels
Observed 343 34
Expected 334.08 42.92
Row % 90.98% 9.02%
|Adj. res| *< *<
46
<*/#
*-#
*88:#,"9*;$9*
No condition
Yes, clinically
diagnosed
Yes,
undiagnosed
Incels
Observed 105 35 9
Expected 117.21 26.68 5.11
Row % 70.47% 23.49% 6.04%
Non-incels
Observed 308 59 9
Expected 295.79 67.32 12.89
Row % 81.91% 15.69% 2.39%
|Adj. res| *:2 2.10 2.07
8*/,
*-#
*88:#,"9*;$9*
Alone Cohabiting
Parents or
carer
Incels
Observed 52 20 73
Expected 44.12 52.27 48.61
Row % 35.86% 13.79% 50.34%
Non-incels
Observed 105 166 100
Expected 112.88 133.73 124.38
Row % 28.30% 44.74% 26.95%
|Adj. res| 1.68 ;*%: %*8;
*/="
*-#
*8#,"9*%89*
White BIPOC
Incels
Observed 96 55
Expected 108.47 42.53
Row % 63.58% 36.42%
Non-incels
Observed 284 94
Expected 271.53 106.47
Row % 75.13% 24.87%
|Adj. res| *;< *;<
*>,"#
++*#
##"*
/,+##
"*"%"
#.(0*2+ 60*$$1.(0*2+
60*$1+.$:;10*8+0*22+2%3-/?*<+*:@
47
Right-leaning Centre Left-leaning
Incels Observed 54 24 61
Row % 38.85% 17.47% 44.70%
Non-incels Observed 132 61 156
Row % 37.82% 17.27 43.88%
48
