Masculinity threats influence evaluation of hypermasculine advertisements

Abstract

The precarious manhood paradigm posits that many men view their gender as a social status that must be earned and maintained, and can be lost. The present study applied the precarious manhood paradigm to a hypermasculine advertisement. A sample of 208 men was collected online. Using a false feedback paradigm, men’s masculinity was either threatened, or not threatened. The men then viewed one of two commercials. One commercial was a neutral, control advertisement, and one was a hypermasculine advertisement. We also measured participants’ endorsement of masculine norms. Results of a moderated moderation analysis indicated that men in the threat condition were more likely to view the hypermasculine advertisement as being masculinity-enhancing, if they also endorsed the masculine norms of Winning, Heterosexual Self-Presentation, and Power over Women. Results for future research applying precarious manhood to advertising, and implications for clinical work with men, are discussed.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 17 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.