Real Men of Genius: The Effects of Masculine Honor Beliefs and Mortality Salience on Risky Behaviors

Masculine Honor Beliefs comprise an ideology whereby men prove their masculinity through risk-taking, palpably demonstrating their masculinity, and avoiding behaviors that make them appear weak (e.g., seeking mental health treatment), especially when they feel threatened. In order to maintain control over their masculine status, men often engage in behaviors that consist of harmful public demonstrations of toughness and bravery. One thing that can threaten their feelings of self control and make them feel particularly insecure is the thought of dying. Mortality Salience research focuses on the behaviors one exhibits after their awareness of mortality is made salient. Our study aimed to connect these fields and examine how masculine honor beliefs and mortality salience interact to predict behaviors such as risk taking. We hypothesized that men higher in masculine honor beliefs would report greater risk taking behaviors, lower support for preventative medicine (including COVID-19 prevention), and lower support for mental health treatment-seeking in general. We predicted that these effects would be especially pronounced when men are primed with mortality salience due because of the loss of control experienced. Specifically, we predicted that when men are primed to think of their own death, they would report significantly higher masculine honor beliefs and accompanying risk-taking and control behaviors than those who imagined their general death the pain they feel during a dental exam because it would exaggerate the threat of losing control in the pandemic. Ultimately, we found that mortality salience actually decreased masculine honor beliefs, likely because the men lost control they could not gain back. These findings show how men’s behaviors, such as risk taking, are influenced by personal ideologies related to traditional masculine values and how control is possibly a dominating factor of masculine honor beliefs.