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Does Masculinity Boost Men's Mental Health?
Malcolm and Simone discuss new research showing masculinity correlates with better mental health in men, contrary to common toxic masculinity narratives. More life satisfaction and less negativity about masculinity predicts higher wellbeing. They compare Odysseus vs Achilles masculinity, protective vs nurturing gender norms, reasons for voting differences, and information gaps affecting worldviews
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Yeah. And a lot of people, they point this out and they're like, this is why women shouldn't vote.
And this, you know, does they, they'll say that this causes differential voting behavior in men and women and that if women were voting, we would have a better outcomes.
And I don't know, like I actually, I want, I want to come at this like as, as much of an outsider as possible. Is this true?
Simone Collins: I question, though, the extent to which this, these dynamics of conflict and, Like the winning party translate over to, to politics like to political issues. Like I, I, I don't. Are
Malcolm Collins: you denying that men and women vote differently?
No,
Simone Collins: no, no. I, I do think I do. Well, we know, we know that men and women vote differently and have very different points that you're making.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: You sure? I appreciate it. So Simone, we'll get started now. I am so excited to be talking with you. So we have this policy where we send each other interesting research when we find it. And Simone sent me some research [00:01:00] today, which was.
Really elucidating because I always like when research disconfirms the hypothesis that the researcher went into it with. So, the researcher was looking at the really high suicide rate in men when compared with women. You know, we see this. Right, right.
It's a sign of, , mental health issues in our society.
And he assumed and I can see how somebody, especially if they're tainted by like the virus would assume this that, well, that must be what a men have that women don't have. It's masculinity. Therefore, it's masculinity, which is causing this because masculinity is like a toxic thing for men to experience.
Simone Collins: Mm. Masculinity. Jacuzzi.
Malcolm Collins: So then he ran a big study, a big study. He ran a big study on this. And what he found is that actually masculinity correlated with much better mental health in men instead of worse mental health in men.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So let's, let's get into this. Cause I thought it was interesting. And there's a really great. Overview, maybe Malcolm, you can link to it from PsyPost, which we've been reading [00:02:00] since God, like 2016. I love PsyPost so much. PsyPost. org. P S Y P O S T. They, they post summaries of a lot of psychology studies as they come out.
They link to them, which is very helpful because so many articles, like we're talking New York Times, Wall Street Journal, never linked to the studies they reference it drives me nuts. Cause then you can never like what's the methodology like, and then often what they also do now that they've grown to become a bigger brand than they used to be, is they will interview the researchers that have just.
published the study, which is just great. So this particular study was authored by John Berry. That's the guy that Malcolm was talking about. And it was, it was published in Perspectives in Male Psychology. Or sorry, he's the author of Perspectives in Male Psychology as an introduction.
But so the study that he did that we're talking about here that I thought was really interesting and shared with Malcolm was one in which he surveyed over 2, 000 men in the [00:03:00] UK. And over 2000 men in Germany. So this is like, you know, specific set of people. And I t
Published on 1 year, 11 months ago