The significance of masculinity in politics

Problem

Men continue to dominate the political sphere across the world, and as such, better understanding the factors that drive and influence mens political attitudes and behavior is incredibly important. Precarious manhood in particular is an aspect of male psychology that has not been thoroughly examined in the political realm. 

My role

• Developed the research questions and study materials

• Collected survey and experimental data

• Analyzed data in statistical software

• Co-wrote three publications (two already published) on the results.  

Method & Analysis

The studies conducted for this project relied on a quantitative approach, using survey and experimental methodologies to collect data across a variety of platforms including in person, online using Mechanical Turk and Prolific and through the use of Google Trends data. 

In Study 1 we collected data from 500 men on Mechanical Turk; in Studies 2 and 3 we used Google searches and real-world voting data; in Study 4 we collected data on Prolific from 340 participants; and in Studies 5 and 6 we collected data in person from 234 and 64 participants respectively. 

We analyzed the data using factor analysis, descriptive statistics, correlations, linear, hierarchical, and logistic regressions, t-tests and mixed ANOVAs in SPSS and Stata.

Results

• In Studies 1-3 we found that precarious manhood predicted support for aggressive policies (e.g., the death penalty, torture, military intervention) and aggressive politicians in 2016 and Republicans in 2018.

• In Studies 4-6 we found that men whose manhood was threatened experimentally supported aggressive policies more than those who manhood had not been threatened. In addition, we found that this trend was only true for men with a liberal political ideology, but not those with a conservative political ideology