Men who blend emotional openness with progressive gender attitudes into their sense of manhood appear less reactive when their masculinity is called into question, a study published in Social Psychology Quarterly has found. The research, led by Justin Huft of the University of California, Riverside, used a novel measure of what he calls hybrid masculinity and suggests that how men respond to threats to their gender status depends in part on how they define manhood for themselves.
Hybrid masculinity as a buffer against threats to manhood
The study sits within the sociological idea of hegemonic masculinity—the dominant cultural ideal in the United States that treats toughness, emotional restraint, self-reliance, heterosexuality, dominance and a aversion to anything feminine as the template for manhood. When men feel their manhood is questioned, they often engage in masculine overcompensation, exaggerating aggressive or macho behaviours to reaffirm their status.
Previous research has shown how quickly defensive reactions to gender threats can emerge. For instance, earlier experiments suggested that men who were led to believe they scored higher on femininity tended to respond with more war-supportive attitudes, less tolerance for gay people, and stronger interest in sport utility vehicles. Other work has demonstrated physical demonstrations of toughness in response to masculinity threats. Huft’s study builds on this, asking whether adopting what he terms hybrid masculinity could blunt these effects.
Traditionally, studies have treated masculinity as a single, rigid identity. Yet sociologists have lately highlighted hybrid masculinity, a form in which men incorporate traits often associated with women or marginalised groups into their identity. Examples include openly discussing emotions, displaying affection toward male friends, or supporting feminism and LGBTQ+ rights, all while maintaining other social privileges associated with being a man.
Huft designed the project to test whether endorsing hybrid masculinity shields men from overcompensating when their gender status is threatened. He also created the first survey instrument intended to measure hybrid masculinity in statistical research.
“While there has been interesting work done on masculine overcompensation, it has largely depicted masculinity as a monolithic identity,” Huft told PsyPost. “This is inconsistent with some other work in the masculinities literature, which depicts multiple forms of masculinity. My aim was to explore how masculine overcompensation looks when accounting for another form of masculine identity.”
To test his idea, Huft recruited 988 heterosexual adult men in the United States through an online panel. Participants ranged from 18 to 83 years old, with an average age around 40, and reported an average household income between $50,000 and $59,999 per year. The sample was racially diverse, with roughly 65 per cent identifying as white, 15 per cent as Black, 10 per cent as Asian, 8 per cent as Latinx, and 2 per cent as another racial background. About 46 per cent described themselves as liberal, 31 per cent as conservative, and 22 per cent as moderate; just over half reported a religious affiliation.
Before any feedback, participants assessed their baseline level of traditional masculinity. They also completed Huft’s newly developed 20-item hybrid masculinity questionnaire, which measured two closely related aspects: progressive gender attitudes (such as supporting women’s and LGBTQ+ rights or agreeing that men can wear makeup) and emotional expressiveness (such as telling others when sad, showing empathy, and expressing affection toward male friends).
Participants also answered questions measuring three sociological identity factors: how important being masculine was to their overall sense of self (identity prominence), how often they thought about their masculinity in daily life (identity salience), and how much they felt their close friends and family viewed their masculinity similarly (identity verification).
For the experimental manipulation, participants received feedback presented as a 0 to 100 scale indicating their masculinity, where 0 was feminine and 100 was masculine. They were randomly assigned to a non-threatening condition, told their responses placed them toward the high end of the average male range, or a threatening condition, told they were toward the high end of the average female range.
After feedback, all participants completed a 21-item measure of agreement with traditional, dominant masculine norms, scored on a seven-point scale. The items covered seven hallmarks of rigid manhood: emotional restriction, self-reliance, negative views of gay people, avoidance of femininity, prioritising sex, a desire for leadership-driven dominance, and valuing physical toughness.
At baseline, groups did not differ in traditional masculinity. After the feedback, those told they were in the feminine-leaning range endorsed higher levels of rigid masculine norms, averaging 3.19 out of 7 compared with 2.97 out of 7 for those told they were in the masculine-leaning range. While the overall difference was small, it indicated that the threat did trigger masculine overcompensation across the sample.
Huft then controlled for a range of variables, including baseline masculinity, identity importance, everyday awareness of masculinity, identity verification, religiosity, political orientation, race and income. In the baseline model, the masculinity-threatening feedback predicted a 0.17-point increase in rigid masculine norms. Higher endorsement of hybrid masculinity was associated with lower endorsement of those norms overall.
The precision of the results improved when Huft tested the interaction between hybrid masculinity and threat. He found that hybrid masculinity moderated the impact of the threat, reducing the overcompensation effect by 0.23 points for each 1-point rise on the hybrid masculinity scale. In practical terms, men with low hybrid masculinity scores showed a larger bump in rigid norms after a threat, while the gap between threatened and non-threatened groups narrowed toward zero among men with high hybrid masculinity.
Some other factors predicted stronger endorsement of traditional masculine norms regardless of threat. Men who frequently thought about their masculinity, those with more conservative political views, those with lower household incomes, and non-white participants tended to align more with rigid masculine norms.
The findings echo earlier PsyPost coverage of threats to manhood heightening support for aggressive political and foreign-policy strategies, though those studies focused on political attitudes and observed effects among liberal men in some instances. In Huft’s study, the pattern differed: men scoring highly on hybrid masculinity tended to be more politically liberal and reacted less to the threat.
The study also sits alongside other research that did not observe a rise in conservative views, support for war or homophobia after a masculinity threat. Huft notes that those earlier findings examined broader political and social attitudes rather than the full set of personal masculine norms used here.
Huft offers two possible explanations for the buffering pattern. Men who embrace emotional openness and progressive views may have already loosened the link between self-worth and traditional macho ideals, making feminine cues less upsetting. Alternatively, they may draw on other facets of identity, such as emotional maturity or humour, to feel secure without needing to act tough.
Despite the apparent individual-level benefit, Huft cautions that hybrid masculinity does not automatically dismantle gender inequality in society. The theory suggests that blending softer traits into manhood can help some men present themselves as modern and progressive while still retaining privileges associated with being male.
“Masculinity isn’t just one thing,” Huft explained. “It contains different attitudes, behaviours, and characteristics. These different constellations of masculinity cause people to perceive and experience masculinity threats differently. This, in turn, creates different sorts of responses to masculinity threats.”
The study, titled Hybrid Masculinity as a Buffer against Threats to Masculinity, was authored by Justin Huft.
