Measure of a Man

Abstract

As social psychologists investigating topics pertaining to gender and intergroup relations, much of the research that has impacted our own work has been focused on the experiences of women. Perhaps because gender stereotypes legitimize men’s greater status relative to women (Eagly, 1987; Ridgeway, 2001), their potential negative effects on men are often overlooked. Researchers have generally focused on the ways in which stereotyping processes and traditional gender roles produce negative consequences for women, for good reason. Gender stereotypes have been shown to result in discrimination against women in the workplace (Rudman, Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Nauts, 2012), disrupt women’s performance in counter-normative domains (such as math and science fields; Good, Woodzicka, & Wingfield, 2010; O’Brien & Crandall, 2003), and can incur negative consequences for women’s self-esteem (Good & Sanchez, 2010) and relationships (Sanchez, Phelan, Moss-Racusin, & Good, 2012). In contrast, comparatively little research has investigated the implications of gender stereotyping processes for men. The assumption that gender stereotypes uniquely or disproportionately impact women may not only reinforce unrealistic expectations of men, but also obscure a rich unexplored area ripe for empirical investigation. Recently, researchers have begun to fill this gap; results from a growing subfield suggest that despite occupying positions of societal power and dominance, pressure to adhere to a strict definition of masculinity is often associated with serious health (Courtenay, 2000), relational (Burn & Ward, 2005), and professional (Moss-Racusin, Phelan, & Rudman, 2010) consequences for men (see Vandello, Bosson, Cohen, Burnaford, & Weaver, 2008). This special issue offers a timely compendium of manuscripts from this new (yet rapidly expanding) area of research, focusing on various outcomes of gender stereotyping processes for men. Our call for papers resulted in 29 submissions, many of which represented interdisciplinary work merging social psychology with health psychology, clinical psychology, educational psychology, industrial organizational psychology, developmental psychology, media studies, sociology, and social advocacy work. The quality of the submissions made it difficult to select the six papers that seemed most relevant, impactful, and scientifically rigorous within this growing subfield. As such, this special issue includes a compelling mix of topics and theoretical approaches, reflecting the diversity and range of work being conducted on masculinity and male stereotyping. Through their studies of gendered food packaging, Zhu, Brescoll, Newman, and Uhlmann demonstrate the health impacts of gender stereotyping. First, the authors demonstrate that both men and women prefer unhealthy food when primed with masculinity, while femininity primes were associated with preferences for healthier foods. Next, they reveal that the gender stereotype congruency of food packaging (i.e., feminine packaging for healthful foods, and masculine packaging for less healthy foods) impacted ratings of product attractiveness, taste, purchasing intentions, and even the amount participants were willing to spend on the product. Of importance, they also demonstrate reactance to explicitly gendered packaging among some participants. Given that men are stereotypically associated with unhealthy eating, the implications of gender-congruent advertising on men’s health are far-reaching. Michniewicz and Vandello consider the downstream consequences of masculine identity threat, both for men and women. Across three studies, they show that participants are more likely to excuse sexism perpetrated by a man who has recently been emasculated by a woman (i.e., experienced masculine identity threat caused by a woman) relative to a man who received a gender identity threat from another man or a man who received a nongendered threat. Importantly, both male and female participants demonstrated this pattern of excusal. The importance of continuously reaffirming men’s identity therefore is not only detrimental to men, but also to women. Glick, Wilkerson, and Cuffe highlight masculine identification from a social identity perspective (i.e., strength of ingroup identification) rather than endorsement of a set of