When a guy feels his masculinity is being undermined, he may want to punch something. That, in any case, is the implication of a new study by two psychology researchers at the University of South Florida. As the press release for the study explains:
In several studies, [the researchers] used [the] task [of braiding hair] to force men to behave in a “feminine” manner, and recorded what happened. In one study, some men braided hair; others did the more masculine—or gender-neutral—task of braiding rope. Given the options afterwards of punching a bag or doing a puzzle, the hair-braiders overwhelmingly chose the former. When one group of men braided hair and others did not, and all punched the bag, the hair-braiders punched harder. When they all braided hair and only some got to punch, the non-punchers evinced more anxiety on a subsequent test.
Aggression, write the authors, is a “manhood-restoring tactic.”
As is the case with most experimental psychology studies, it’s not clear to what degree this result applies to the real world, rather than to a specific set of people asked to perform a specific task in a lab setting. (There are a lot of bullshit experimental studies out there.) But the logic behind this study makes perfect sense, and I’m inclined to give it some credibility. I imagine the logic applies equally well to a range of supposedly “emasculating” tasks, like holding a woman’s purse, buying tampons, or, I dunno, watching “The View.”
Of course, with the first two examples, there is an alternative solution to the problem: to not actually give a shit about idiotic masculine stereotypes. What on earth is the big deal about buying tampons, or braiding hair? I find holding a purse annoying, but I’d be equally annoyed to hold a male friend’s wallet. (I just don’t like shopping with other people.)
In the case of The View, I can’t see a solution. Pretty much any exposure to that show makes me want to punch the television. Of course, I have female friends who feel the same way. As Zach Galifianakis once put it:
I have to stop crying when I watch “The View.” It’s not because of the topics at hand, I just feel sorry for that couch.
I think we all do.
equal goes it loose
Anit and THASF both seemed to be evo-psych trolls.
The crowning moment of lulz for me with evo psych was “teenage girls may cut themselves to demonstrate their resistance to infection” (from Geoffrey Miller’s book “Spent”.)
My brother holds my purse all the time. And carries it around the store when I have my arms full. He’s a 6 foot 4 inch tall man who weighs 340 pounds with hair down past his shoulders and a full beard. If you looked at him and knew nothing about him, you’d say he was pretty friggin’ “manly.” And, I guess… he is? Luckily he doesn’t feel he has to prove himself to anyone. =P
O yeah.. and my 6 foot 1 inch tall boyfriend who shaves his head bald, plays drums, guitar, and bass? Carries my pads for me when we go to Disneyland.
I love the men in my life. They know exactly who they are and won’t let society pressure them.
Ok, noone. So I’m just throwing this in here in case anyone wants to take a look at it.
Evolutionary science at its best: allesevolution.wordpress.com
Oddly enough, punching makes me want to braid things.
hey, I just found Cracked’s 8 TV ads that hate women and that tire ad was number 8
Which goes to show, I am bored out of my gourd.
Gender essentialists embarrass themselves again. So, anger at braiding hair is hard-wired into the male brain? Okay.
I think that today, few men with pretensions at hypermasculinity would dispute that ancient Spartans represent the epitome of uber-manly manliest manly men. (In fact, I suspect 300 is at the top of your regular MGTOW’s movie list, except for those parts inserted by the Feminist Bureau of Feminazi Pinko Commie Propaganda, that are favorable to the Spartan queen.) And yet, Spartan men braided their hair. In fact, a Spartan earned the right to grow his hair long and braid it only at the age of thirty, and given the Spartan warrior lifestyle, it was no mean feat to actually live that long; so braids on a man were a symbol of his battlefield-tested manly manliness. Spartan women, by contrast, not only failed to girlfy themselves with braids for their wedding day, but … well, let’s just say if you were marrying a Spartan woman, you’d be in for a surprise.
Reminds me of that whole evo psych fiasco about color preferences being supposedly hard-wired.
But the logic behind this study makes perfect sense.
No, it does not. Like many feminist researchers, Bosson and Vadello started with a premise and sought to prove that premise right rather than engaging in objective analysis. Missing is any response from the men, which would give a far better insight into their behavior than just assuming why they reacted as they did. There is also the glaring issue of them asking the men to follow up by doing a violent activity. The notion that men punching a punching bag proves “aggression is a ‘manhood-restoring tactic'” only works if one ignores that the act is an accepted masculine activity. This then begs the question of why the researchers chose a violent activity instead of something more benign and more similar to the previous activity, such as shaving or cutting hair. If the men behaved aggressively during that activity, then one could logically argue that aggression is a manhood-restoring activity. Instead, it would appear that at best the men more eagerly engaged in the boxing activity so as to reassert their masculinity, and the activity just happened to be an aggressive activity. That does not prove “aggression is a ‘manhood-restoring tactic'”. It only shows that men will reassert their masculinity if they feel it has been challenged.
Speaking from personal experience, I know a lot of boys and men who have carried purses, bought tampons, and braided hair. I have not seen any of them punch anyone or anything after doing that.
[quote “swgm”]$6 box of tampons[/quote]
Please tell me where you buy your tampons. I am paying like $12 a box up here.
OK, quote fail, but whatever. Y’all know what I meant to do there.
@toysoldier
You are correct. The primary research concludes exactly that. The secondary analysis however gets warped into “Aggression, write the authors, is a “manhood-restoring tactic.””
Compare that with what I quoted earlier:
And you’ll see the difference between what you read, the primary article, and what many people analyze it to mean.
I thought braiding hair make black guys want to drink coke. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CXhEtgO59EQ
They did have the option of a non-violent activity offered to them. They chose to do the punching bag rather then the puzzle.
Which could have been of two men punching one another for all we know.
I’m still confused about the entire premise of the study.
If I were asked to braid something, my desires to do something when I was done would depend on how it went.
I am much better at braiding rope than hair (the only hair I have any facility at braiding is my own, and even that is pretty frustrating at times). That means I might be frustrated at my failure to achieve the task.
That makes a very different explanation for me relieving the tension on a heavy bag than doing a puzzle; which might also strike as likely to cause frustration, I am more likely to be wound up, and so unlikely to concentrate, hence more likely to want to punch the bag.
I can’t say what the specifics of the study are, but it doesn’t look well designed to me. I’m going to fly it past some psychologists I know, and see what they think of it.
Pecunium, this study was posted at Jezebel, and more than half the comments were saying essentially what you said above.
I think it’s a good theory.
Simone: Wait… feminists didn’t say all men are (at heart) violent apes with no self-control at all?
Say it isn’t so.
A man’s masculinity can never be threatened since masculine is inherent in man. This is just feminist jargon trying to explain a quality women don’t and can’t possess. Men are exactly what they’re supposed to be…Men.
NWOslave-are you feeling okay, that actually made sense.
Goes back to this article.
Pecunium and Amnesia, those are both good points. This isn’t a perfect study, and I hope I didn’t suggest that I thought that it was.
But, again, I do think the basic premise makes sense: put men to work at a task that challenges cultural definitions of masculinity, then give them a choice between doing something aggressive and something not aggressive; if they choose the aggressive option, it suggests that aggression may well be, as the authors note a “manhood-restoring tactic.” It doesn’t mean that every time a guy gets his manhood questioned he’s going to punch something. It means that’s *one possible way* he might try to feel more like a man. Also, there’s a distinction between feeling aggressive and acting on that impulse. The study gave the men a safe and acceptable way to express this aggressive feeling,
Amused, you’ve completely missed the point of the study and my post: this sort of masculinity is NOT hardwired into men. It’s cultural. The press release makes this point several times; see the bit quoted by cynikal above. And note my comment in the post suggesting that guys shouldn’t “give a shit about idiotic masculine stereotypes.” If these masculine stereotypes were hardwired, this would be impossible.
@ Dave: Please, don’t YOU start too with the MRA-typical failure of understanding sarcasm. Amused pointed out exactly what you said above, and she also mentioned that “gender essentialists” are wrong again because it is obviously not hardwired. That’s why she mentioned the Spartans, because they don’t see braiding hair as something unmanly either, which means she understood that…gender differences…aren’t hardwired…you know?
Oh, nevermind. Whatever.
@Elizabeth: That article is fairly funny, but what are you gonna do with the comments? See MRA-typical failure to get sarcasm mentioned above.
Lydia: Oops.
In my defense, I’m very sleepy.
Dave: I don’t know if the study is any good. I don’t know enough about the experimental methodology, the working definitions, how the groups were chosen, what control groups were used (and how defined), etc.
I’ve taken part in a few such studies. I’ve helped to build a couple, and I see a huge number of ways this one could go wrong.
I’m waiting for feedback on it from a psych-prof I know, we’ll see what comes back.
But, absent a look at the report itself (or at least an abstract), I don’t trust it, because there are too many ways for this to have been screwed up.
Not the least is the way the reporter handled the information, because I don’t know what was given, nor how well it was understood.
If this study had concluded that men who feel pressured by society to act “masculine” all the time get agitated when they’re made to do something coded as “feminine”, it would make more sense.
Kinda like how the standard insults of the MRA crowd like “mangina” only really work on people who actually worry that they might be viewed as not being masculine.
MertvayaRuka* And it’s possible that’s what the study was working on, it might even be what it says, but that article doesn’t give me enough to go on.
*do you speak Russian?
I think Pecunium has a really good point about frustration being an alternative (if not necessarily better) rationale for wanting to perform a physical activity. I definitely concur that rope is MUCH easier to brain than hair. So now I’m wondering what other similar activities we can think of that could be coded as feminine vs masculine;
1) painting fingernails vs painting model cars
2) baking muffins vs barbequeing
3) planting flowers vs planting trees
4) Driving a minivan vs driving a sportscar
I dunno, this is actually kinda hard! Anyone else wanna play?