Masculinity

Abstract

Masculinity is a type of gender identity: the male-associated social roles, norms, and behaviors a culture prescribes for men, studied as a social construction rather than a biological given. The field treats manhood not as a fixed trait but as a standard men are expected to meet. This article develops its main threads: the gender role strain paradigm, on which masculine norms are often contradictory and their violation is costly; the sociological account of hegemonic masculinity, which makes masculinity plural and hierarchical; the measurement of conformity to masculine norms and its robust links to mental health; the theory of precarious manhood, on which manhood is a hard-won status easily lost and defended under threat; and the consequences of masculine norms for men's health and help-seeking. A worked example and three interactive demonstrations make the mechanisms manipulable.

Keywords: masculinity, gender identity, masculine norms, precarious manhood, gender role conflict

A boy told not to cry, a man who will not see a doctor until a symptom is undeniable, a public dare answered because backing down would look unmanly—each is a small act, and each makes sense only against a shared idea of what a man is supposed to be. That idea is not read off the body. Cultures differ in what they expect of men, the expectations shift across history, and individual men meet them unevenly, which is precisely why masculinity is studied as something learned, enforced, and contested rather than something given at birth (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

The behavioural sciences approach masculinity through several distinct questions. What are the norms that define the male role, and what happens when a man fails to meet them or meets norms that are themselves harmful? Is there one masculinity or many, and how are they ranked? How tightly does a given man conform to masculine norms, and does that conformity predict his well-being? Why does manhood seem so easily threatened, and what do men do when it is? And how do these norms reach into men's bodies, shortening their lives and keeping them from seeking help? The sections below take these in turn, after first placing masculinity within the broader category of gender identity under which it is classified.

What Masculinity Is

Masculinity, in the sense the behavioural sciences study it, is the set of male-associated social roles, norms, and behaviors that a culture prescribes for men—what the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary tersely calls “male-associated sex-specific social roles and behaviors unrelated to biologic function.” The qualification matters: the construct is deliberately separated from the biology of sex. Chromosomes and hormones are one thing; the expectation that a man be stoic, self-reliant, dominant, and a provider is another, and it is the second that masculinity names. A man can possess the first without endorsing the second, and the content of the second varies by culture and era, which is the standing evidence that masculinity is made rather than found (Thompson & Pleck, 1986).

Two distinctions organise the field. The first separates masculinity ideology—a person's beliefs about how men ought to behave—from masculine gender identity, a man's sense of himself as male; one can hold traditional beliefs about men in general while living an untraditional life, and vice versa, so the two are measured separately (Levant et al., 2013). The second separates the norms a culture holds from an individual's conformity to them: a norm such as emotional control exists in the culture whether or not a given man obeys it, and the degree to which he does is an individual difference with measurable correlates (Mahalik et al., 2003).

In the Medical Subject Headings vocabulary, Masculinity is a descriptor filed under Gender Identity, and the placement is apt: masculinity is one culturally elaborated answer to the question of what it means to be of a given gender, intelligible only in relation to the gender system it belongs to and to the femininity it is so often defined against. The remainder of this article takes the field's major perspectives in turn, from the role norms that define the male standard to the health consequences of living by it.

Perspectives on Masculinity

The study of masculinity is organised less by one grand theory than by a set of complementary perspectives, each tied to a distinct question. A gender role strain perspective asked what the male role demands and found its norms contradictory and their breach costly. A hegemonic masculinity perspective asked whether masculinity is singular and answered that it is plural and hierarchically ranked. A conformity perspective asked how tightly individual men adhere to masculine norms and tied that adherence to mental health. A precarious manhood perspective asked why manhood is so easily threatened and found it a status that must be earned and defended. And a health perspective asked what masculine norms do to men's bodies and their willingness to seek help. Table 1 summarises them, and the sections that follow develop each in turn.

Figure 1

Connell's Hierarchy of Masculinities

Table 1

Perspectives on Masculinity

Gender Role Strain and Masculine Norms

The founding framework of the psychology of men is the gender role strain paradigm, which inverted an older assumption. Earlier work treated masculinity as a trait one had in some healthy quantity, so that trouble came from having too little of it. The strain paradigm instead held that the male role is itself the problem: its norms are often inconsistent, frequently exceed what any man can achieve, and in several cases are dysfunctional even when met, so that distress arises not from a shortfall of masculinity but from the strain of living under its demands. Edward Thompson and Joseph Pleck gave this idea empirical shape by analysing the structure of male role norms, showing that the beliefs men hold about how men should behave resolve into coherent factors—status, toughness, and anti-femininity—that can be measured (Thompson & Pleck, 1986).

James O'Neil carried the paradigm into clinical territory with the construct of gender role conflict: the psychological strain that results when rigid, sexist, or restrictive gender roles produce consequences that harm the man himself or others. Summarising a quarter-century of research with the Gender Role Conflict Scale, O'Neil documented that gender role conflict—organised around success and power, restrictive emotionality, restrictive affectionate behavior between men, and conflict between work and family—correlates reliably with depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, and poorer attitudes toward seeking help (O'Neil, 2008). Ronald Levant extended the measurement of the norms themselves, developing the Male Role Norms Inventory to assess masculinity ideology—endorsement of the traditional male code—as distinct from a man's own conduct, and later refining it into a short form with demonstrated structure and measurement invariance (Levant et al., 2013). Together the three established that the male role could be specified, measured, and linked to suffering.

Hegemonic Masculinity

Where the strain paradigm came from psychology, the most influential idea in the sociology of masculinity came from Raewyn Connell: that there is not one masculinity but many, arranged in a hierarchy. At the top sits hegemonic masculinity—the configuration of practice that is culturally exalted at a given time and place, and that legitimates the dominant position of men over women and of some men over others. Most men do not embody it, yet the majority are complicit, benefiting from the “patriarchal dividend” the dominant form secures without living up to its exacting standard. Other masculinities are subordinated (notably gay masculinities, ranked beneath the heterosexual ideal) or marginalized (along lines of class and race), so masculinity becomes a relational structure rather than a single type (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

The concept proved powerful enough to need revision. In a widely cited reformulation, Connell and James Messerschmidt retained the core insight—that masculinities are plural and hierarchically ordered—while discarding the implication that hegemonic masculinity is a fixed character type held by a ruling few. They stressed instead that the hegemonic form is historically mutable, is sustained as much by complicit majorities as by dominant individuals, can incorporate elements once coded as subordinate, and operates at local, regional, and global levels at once (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). The reformulation kept hegemonic masculinity useful as an account of how a particular ideal of manhood comes to seem natural and to organise the behavior even of men who fall short of it.

Conformity to Masculine Norms

If norms define the male role, the question of how closely a given man lives by them became its own research programme. James Mahalik and colleagues built the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory to measure it, resolving the dominant norms of the contemporary Western male role into distinct dimensions—winning, emotional control, risk-taking, violence, dominance, playboy (casual sexual promiscuity), self-reliance, primacy of work, power over women, disdain for homosexuals, and the pursuit of status—each scored for the degree of a man's conformity (Mahalik et al., 2003). Michael Parent and Bonnie Moradi later confirmed the instrument's factor structure and produced the briefer CMNI-46, which retained the most robust dimensions and made the construct practical for large studies (Parent & Moradi, 2009).

The payoff of measuring conformity was the discovery that it predicts mental health, and that the prediction is uneven across norms. Y. Joel Wong and colleagues meta-analysed dozens of studies and found that overall conformity to masculine norms was associated with worse mental-health outcomes and, especially, with more negative attitudes toward psychological help-seeking. Crucially the association was carried by particular norms: self-reliance, playboy, and power over women were the dimensions most consistently and strongly tied to poor outcomes, whereas others (such as the primacy of work) showed little or no relation (Wong et al., 2017). The finding reframed “conforming to masculine norms” from a single quantity into a profile in which composition matters as much as level—a point the first demonstration makes concrete. Demo 1 lets the reader set conformity across several norms and watch a composite distress index respond to which norms are endorsed.

Precarious Manhood

A distinct social-psychological tradition asks not what the norms are but why manhood feels so fragile. Joseph Vandello and Jennifer Bosson proposed that manhood, unlike womanhood, is widely regarded as a precarious status: hard won and easily lost, something earned through public action rather than conferred by biological maturation, and therefore something that must be repeatedly demonstrated and can be stripped away by a single failure. Across several experiments they found that people judged manhood more than womanhood to require ongoing proof, that threats to a man's gender status produced anxiety, and that men responded to such threats with compensatory displays—including aggression and risk-taking—that served to restore the threatened status (Vandello et al., 2008).

Reviewing the programme, Vandello and Bosson synthesised the evidence into a coherent account: because manhood is conferred by social consensus rather than by the body, it is chronically insecure, and that insecurity—not masculinity itself—drives much of the behavior commonly attributed to men, from bravado to violence (Vandello & Bosson, 2013). A shorter statement of the theory tied it directly to action and aggression, arguing that manhood threats motivate behavior aimed at publicly reaffirming one's status (Bosson & Vandello, 2011). More recent work has refined when the threat bites: Ann Stanaland and colleagues proposed an expectancy-discrepancy-threat model and found that masculine insecurity is greatest in men whose motivation to be masculine is externally pressured rather than internally felt, locating “fragile” masculinity in a specific motivational profile rather than in men at large (Stanaland et al., 2023). Demo 2 lets the reader accrue manhood status through public proofs and watch a single threat undo it, exposing the hard-won, easily-lost asymmetry.

Masculinity, Health, and Help-Seeking

The most consequential application of masculinity research is to men's health, where the norms turn out to be a matter of life and death. Will Courtenay argued that the everyday enactment of masculinity—refusing to admit weakness or pain, disdaining rest and help, courting risk—is itself a health behavior, and a damaging one: in performing a culturally idealised masculinity, men systematically undermine their own well-being, which helps explain men's higher rates of injury, substance use, and premature death (Courtenay, 2000). Masculinity, on this view, is not merely correlated with poor health but is partly constitutive of the behaviors that produce it.

The sharpest edge of this account is help-seeking. Michael Addis and James Mahalik analysed why men are reluctant to seek help—from doctors, therapists, and others—and framed the reluctance not as simple stubbornness but as a predictable consequence of masculine socialisation interacting with the nature of the problem: men are less likely to seek help the more a problem threatens norms such as self-reliance and emotional control, the more central the ability in question is to their identity, and the less they see other men doing the same (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). One mechanism behind this reluctance is what Ronald Levant termed normative male alexithymia: traditional socialisation discourages the expression of vulnerable emotion so consistently that many men arrive at adulthood with a reduced capacity to identify and put words to their own feelings, which makes articulating a problem to a clinician harder still (Levant et al., 2013). This reluctance is learned early: Christopher Reigeluth and Addis documented how adolescent boys actively police one another's masculinity, using teasing and the threat of being called unmanly to enforce emotional suppression and self-reliance among their peers (Reigeluth & Addis, 2016). The clinical response has been to articulate healthy masculinities: Marcus Di Bianca and Mahalik offered a relational-cultural framework that treats connection, mutuality, and the capacity to seek and give help as achievable masculine strengths rather than failures of manhood (Di Bianca & Mahalik, 2022). Demo 3 lets the reader hold symptom severity fixed and vary a man's endorsement of self-reliance norms, reading off how sharply the probability of seeking help falls.

Worked Example

The mechanisms become concrete in three small exercises, each matching one of the demonstrations. The numbers below are illustrative—they capture the qualitative shape of the published findings rather than reproducing any single reported statistic.

Conformity to masculine norms (composition, not just level). Model a distress index D as a weighted sum of a man's conformity c​_i (from 0 to 1) across four norms, with weights reflecting the meta-analytic finding that some norms are far more harmful than others: self-reliance (w = 0.35), power over women (w = 0.30), playboy (w = 0.20), and winning (w = 0.15), scaled by 100. Compare two men with the same average conformity of 0.5. Man A conforms strongly (c = 0.8) to the two most harmful norms and weakly (c = 0.2) to the rest: D = 100 × (0.35×0.8 + 0.30×0.8 + 0.20×0.2 + 0.15×0.2) = 59. Man B reverses the profile, conforming strongly to the two least harmful norms and weakly to the harmful ones: D = 100 × (0.35×0.2 + 0.30×0.2 + 0.20×0.8 + 0.15×0.8) = 41. Identical overall conformity, an 18-point gap in distress: the lesson is that which norms a man endorses matters more than how masculine he is on average (Wong et al., 2017). Demo 1 lets the reader set each conformity level and read off D.

Precarious manhood (hard won, easily lost). Represent a man's manhood status S on a 0–100 scale, starting at 50. Each public proof of manhood adds a small increment g = 4; each threat or failure subtracts a large decrement L = 20. Five successive proofs raise the status 50 → 54 → 58 → 62 → 66 → 70, a gain of 20 points earned over five demonstrations. A single threat then returns the status to 50—one failure erasing the work of five proofs. The 5-to-1 asymmetry between the cost of a loss and the value of a gain is the formal content of “hard won and easily lost,” and it is why a status that can be demolished in one stroke must be guarded so vigilantly (Vandello & Bosson, 2013). Demo 2 lets the reader set g and L and watch the trajectory, including the compensatory response that fires when status falls too far.

Masculinity and help-seeking (a norm gate, not a symptom gate). Model the probability that a man seeks help as a logistic function of two inputs on a 0–1 scale—symptom severity and endorsement of self-reliance norms: P = 1 / (1 + e^−z), with z = 4·severity − 4·norm − 1. Hold severity high at 0.8. A man with weak norm endorsement (0.2) has z = 3.2 − 0.8 − 1 = 1.4, giving P ≈ 80%. A man with the same severe symptoms but strong norm endorsement (0.8) has z = 3.2 − 3.2 − 1 = −1.0, giving P ≈ 27%. The symptom is identical; the probability of seeking help falls by more than half as self-reliance norms rise—the norm, not the severity, gates the decision (Addis & Mahalik, 2003). Demo 3 lets the reader move both inputs and trace the help-seeking curve.

Discussion

Read across its perspectives, the science of masculinity converges on a single reorientation: masculinity is better understood as a demanding social standard than as a trait men possess. The gender role strain paradigm located distress in the standard itself—in norms that are contradictory, excessive, and in places harmful even when met—rather than in men who have too little masculinity (Thompson & Pleck, 1986; O'Neil, 2008). The hegemonic-masculinity tradition added that the standard is neither singular nor neutral: it is one dominant form among several, ranked above the rest and doing the political work of legitimating men's position (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

The measurement and social-psychological traditions supplied mechanism and consequence. Conformity research showed that adherence to masculine norms predicts worse mental health and, above all, a retreat from help, with the damage concentrated in a few norms rather than spread evenly (Mahalik et al., 2003; Wong et al., 2017). Precarious-manhood theory explained why the standard is enforced so anxiously—a status earned by consensus and revocable by a single failure must be constantly defended, which turns threat into compensation and sometimes aggression (Vandello et al., 2008). And the health literature traced the human cost, from men's elevated mortality to the learned reluctance, policed from boyhood, to admit a problem and ask for help (Courtenay, 2000; Addis & Mahalik, 2003). The honest summary is that masculinity is plural, hierarchical, measurable, precarious, and consequential for health—and that its harms are best addressed by changing the norms, not by producing more or less masculine men.

Current Directions

The field's most visible recent turn is toward positive or healthy masculinities—an attempt to specify what a non-harmful masculinity would consist of rather than only cataloguing the harms of the traditional code. Di Bianca and Mahalik's relational-cultural framework is representative: it reframes the capacity for connection, mutuality, and help-seeking as masculine competencies, offering clinicians a target other than the suppression of masculinity altogether (Di Bianca & Mahalik, 2022). The move responds to a long-standing criticism that the psychology of men described a problem without a remedy.

A second thread is the refinement of precarious-manhood theory toward specificity about when and for whom masculinity is fragile. Rather than treating all men as uniformly threatened, Stanaland and colleagues' expectancy-discrepancy-threat model locates insecurity in men whose masculinity is externally pressured rather than internally endorsed, predicting that it is this profile—not maleness as such—that produces the anxious, compensatory responses the earlier work documented (Stanaland et al., 2023). Measurement has moved in the same direction, toward brief, psychometrically scrutinised instruments—short-form norm inventories built with modern latent-variable methods—that make the constructs usable in large and longitudinal samples (McDermott et al., 2019). The open questions that remain are the generality of findings drawn largely from Western samples, and how masculine norms are shifting as the gender order itself changes.

Common Misconceptions

Masculinity is just the psychological expression of male biology.

The construct is defined precisely to exclude biology: MeSH calls it social roles and behaviors “unrelated to biologic function.” Masculine norms vary across cultures and eras and are met unevenly by men with identical biology, which is why masculinity is studied as a social construction (Thompson & Pleck, 1986).

There is a single thing called masculinity.

Masculinity is plural and hierarchical. Connell's framework distinguishes a dominant hegemonic form from complicit, subordinated, and marginalized masculinities, ranked along lines of sexuality, class, and race, so “masculinity” names a structured field rather than one type (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

Men who avoid the doctor are simply being stubborn.

Reluctance to seek help follows predictably from masculine socialisation: it is strongest when a problem threatens norms of self-reliance and emotional control, when the ability is central to identity, and when other men are not seen seeking help—a patterned response, not mere obstinacy (Addis & Mahalik, 2003).

Conforming to masculine norms is uniformly bad for mental health.

The harm is concentrated, not uniform. Meta-analysis finds the negative association is driven mainly by self-reliance, playboy, and power-over-women norms, while some norms show little relation to outcomes—so the profile of conformity matters more than its overall level (Wong et al., 2017).

Glossary

Complicit masculinity.

In Connell's hierarchy, the masculinity of the majority of men who do not embody the hegemonic ideal but benefit from the “patriarchal dividend” its dominance secures.

Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory.

Mahalik and colleagues' instrument measuring the degree to which a man conforms to distinct masculine norms such as self-reliance, emotional control, and playboy; later abbreviated as the CMNI-46.

Gender identity.

A person's internal sense of their own gender; the MeSH parent category under which masculinity is filed, since masculinity is one culturally elaborated gender position.

Gender role conflict.

O'Neil's construct for the psychological strain that arises when rigid or restrictive gender roles produce consequences harmful to the man or to others; measured by the Gender Role Conflict Scale.

Gender role strain.

Pleck's paradigm holding that masculine norms are contradictory and often excessive, so that distress comes from the demands of the male role itself rather than from a deficit of masculinity.

Hegemonic masculinity.

Connell's term for the culturally dominant and legitimated configuration of masculinity at a given time and place, which subordinates other masculinities and sustains men's collective standing.

Male role norms.

The shared cultural expectations about how men should behave; Thompson and Pleck resolved them into factors of status, toughness, and anti-femininity.

Marginalized masculinity.

In Connell's hierarchy, a masculinity pushed to the periphery by an axis of inequality other than gender—typically class or race—rather than subordinated within the gender order itself.

Masculine norms.

The specific prescriptions of the contemporary male role—winning, emotional control, risk-taking, self-reliance, playboy, power over women, and others—to which individual men conform in varying degree.

Masculinity ideology.

A person's beliefs about how men ought to behave, measured separately from a man's own conduct or identity; assessed by instruments such as the Male Role Norms Inventory.

Normative male alexithymia.

Levant's hypothesis that traditional male socialisation, by discouraging emotional expression, leaves many men with a diminished ability to identify and describe their own feelings.

Patriarchal dividend.

Connell's term for the advantage men collectively gain from the subordination of women, which complicit men enjoy without personally embodying the hegemonic ideal.

Precarious manhood.

Vandello and Bosson's thesis that manhood is a status earned by public proof and easily lost, so that threats to it provoke anxiety and compensatory, sometimes aggressive, displays.

Subordinated masculinity.

In Connell's hierarchy, a masculinity ranked beneath the hegemonic form—notably gay masculinities ranked below a heterosexual ideal—rather than marginalized by class or race.

Key Researchers

Jennifer K. Bosson

(Professor of Psychology, University of South Florida). Co-developed the theory of precarious manhood, showing experimentally that manhood is seen as a status requiring proof and that threats to it drive anxiety and compensation. ORCID · Google Scholar · Faculty Page

Raewyn Connell

(Professor Emerita, University of Sydney). Originated the theory of hegemonic masculinity, recasting masculinity as plural and hierarchically ordered and transforming the sociology of gender. ORCID · Google Scholar · Wikipedia

Ronald F. Levant

(Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Akron). Developed the Male Role Norms Inventory and the normative male alexithymia hypothesis, and served as president of the American Psychological Association. ORCID · Google Scholar · Wikipedia

James R. Mahalik

(Professor, Lynch School of Education and Human Development, Boston College). Lead developer of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory and a central figure in linking masculine norms to men's health and help-seeking. Google Scholar · Faculty Page

James M. O'Neil

(Professor Emeritus, University of Connecticut). Developed the construct of gender role conflict and the Gender Role Conflict Scale, and was a founding member of the APA division devoted to the psychology of men. Faculty Page

Joseph A. Vandello

(Professor of Psychology, University of South Florida). Co-developed the theory of precarious manhood, synthesising evidence that the insecurity of manhood, rather than masculinity itself, drives much stereotypically male behavior. Google Scholar · Faculty Page

Frequently Asked Questions

What is masculinity in psychology?

Masculinity is the set of male-associated social roles, norms, and behaviors a culture prescribes for men—stoicism, self-reliance, dominance, risk-taking, and the like—studied as a learned social construction distinct from the biology of sex. MeSH defines it as “male-associated sex-specific social roles and behaviors unrelated to biologic function” (Thompson & Pleck, 1986).

What is the gender role strain paradigm?

It is the framework, originating with Joseph Pleck, holding that the male role itself is the source of difficulty: its norms are often contradictory, exceed what men can achieve, and are in places harmful even when met. Distress therefore reflects the strain of the role rather than a shortfall of masculinity (O'Neil, 2008).

What is hegemonic masculinity?

Hegemonic masculinity is Raewyn Connell's term for the culturally dominant, exalted form of masculinity at a given time and place—the one that legitimates men's standing and ranks above other, subordinated and marginalized, masculinities. Most men do not embody it but are complicit in it (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005).

What is precarious manhood?

Precarious manhood is the theory that manhood, unlike womanhood, is widely seen as a status that must be earned through public proof and can be easily lost, so threats to it provoke anxiety and compensatory displays such as aggression and risk-taking (Vandello et al., 2008).

Does conforming to masculine norms harm mental health?

On average yes, but unevenly. Meta-analysis finds conformity to masculine norms associated with worse mental-health outcomes and more negative attitudes toward help-seeking, with the association driven mainly by self-reliance, playboy, and power-over-women norms rather than by all norms equally (Wong et al., 2017).

Why are men reluctant to seek help?

Reluctance follows from masculine socialisation: men are least likely to seek help when a problem threatens norms of self-reliance and emotional control, when the ability is central to their identity, and when they do not see other men seeking help. It is a patterned consequence of norms, not mere stubbornness (Addis & Mahalik, 2003).

How is masculinity measured?

Through several validated instruments measuring different facets: the Male Role Norms Inventory assesses masculinity ideology (beliefs about how men should behave), the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory assesses how closely a man adheres to specific norms, and the Gender Role Conflict Scale assesses the strain those norms produce (Mahalik et al., 2003; Levant et al., 2013).

Is there such a thing as healthy masculinity?

Recent work argues so. Rather than treating masculinity as uniformly harmful, relational-cultural approaches reframe connection, mutuality, and the capacity to seek and give help as masculine strengths, offering an alternative to the traditional code without demanding that men abandon a masculine identity (Di Bianca & Mahalik, 2022).

References

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Di Bianca, M., & Mahalik, J. R. (2022). A relational-cultural framework for promoting healthy masculinities. American Psychologist, 77(3), 321–332. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000929

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McDermott, R. C., Levant, R. F., Hammer, J. H., Borgogna, N. C., & McKelvey, D. K. (2019). Development and validation of a five-item Male Role Norms Inventory using bifactor modeling. Psychology of Men & Masculinities, 20(4), 467–477. https://doi.org/10.1037/men0000178

O'Neil, J. M. (2008). Summarizing 25 years of research on men's gender role conflict using the Gender Role Conflict Scale: New research paradigms and clinical implications. The Counseling Psychologist, 36(3), 358–445. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000008317057

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Stanaland, A., Gaither, S., & Gassman-Pines, A. (2023). When is masculinity “fragile”? An expectancy-discrepancy-threat model of masculine identity. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 27(4), 359–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/10888683221141176

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Wong, Y. J., Ho, M.-H. R., Wang, S.-Y., & Miller, I. S. K. (2017). Meta-analyses of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000176