The Dual Pathways to Masculinity Threats: The Roles of Social Role Incongruity and Social Connection in Masculine Identity Maintenance Among Gay and Straight Men
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT Humans are hardwired to seek out social connections, as well as monitor for warning signs that their belonging may be at risk. Social identities provide a mechanism through which to monitor belonging, shaping how people understand and see themselves, as well as how they are perceived by others. This large qualitative study (n = 203) presents a dual‐pathway model of masculinity threats for self‐identified gay and straight men, integrating theoretical models of the psychological need to belong, role congruity theory and social identity theory. Using reflexive thematic analysis to code descriptions of masculinity‐threatening experiences, we identified two contexts in which threats were experienced: (1) through private and public experiences of role incongruity and (2) through public experiences with social rejection. Furthermore, the content of threats experienced spanned six themes: (a) perceived femininity; (b) deviation from heteronormativity; (c) competency; (d) physical prototypicality; (e) social prototypicality and (f) sociometer. Notably, the few men who felt they had never experienced a masculinity threat before were more likely to believe this was due to the positive regard and self‐esteem they derive from their connections with others. The findings complement and extend the existing research on masculinity threats in meaningful ways: First, they show that gender‐role incongruity can lead to masculinity threats for both straight and gay men. Second, they highlight that social inclusion also plays a significant role in both gay and straight men's experiences with masculinity. Furthermore, the findings have important implications for understanding when, and for whom, masculinity threats may lead to antisocial behaviours.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".