Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

http://psp.sagepub.com/ Precarious Manhood and Displays of Physical Aggression

Jennifer K. Bosson, Joseph A. Vandello, Rochelle M. Burnaford, Jonathan R. Weaver and S. Arzu Wasti Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2009 35: 623 originally published online 6 February 2009 DOI: 10.1177/0146167208331161 The online version of this article can be found at: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/35/5/623

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Precarious Manhood and Displays of Physical Aggression

Jennifer K. Bosson Joseph A. Vandello Rochelle M. Burnaford Jonathan R. Weaver University of South Florida S. Arzu Wasti Sabanci University

The results of three experiments demonstrate that physically aggressive displays are part of mens cultural script for restoring threatened gender status. In Studies 1 and 2, challenges to mens gender status elicited heightened physically aggressive displays, including punching a pad with greater force and selecting an aggressive boxing activity over a nonaggressive puzzle activity. Study 3 established that a public display of aggressive readiness reduced mens anxiety-related cognitions in the wake of a gender threat. This suggests that aggressive displays may function to downregulate negative affect when manhood has been threatened. The discussion considers past research on gender and physical aggression in light of the authors thesis that manhood, relative to womanhood, is culturally defined as a precarious status that must be actively, even aggressively, defended.
Keywords: gender roles; physical aggression; role violations; self-threats; negative affect

aggressive readiness as a means of validating their precarious gender status, especially when it has been challenged. The purpose of these studies is to test our ideas about the link between precarious manhood and physical aggression. THE WHAT AND WHY OF PRECARIOUS MANHOOD Theorists working within a variety of disciplines including anthropology (Gilmore, 1990), sociology (M. Kimmel, 1996), psychology (Pleck, 1981, 1995), and political science (Ducat, 2004)portray manhood as a social status that is both elusive and tenuous. The elusiveness of manhood lies in the fact that, in many cultures, the transition from boyhood to manhood is not a natural condition that comes about spontaneously through biological maturation but rather is a precarious or artificial state that boys must win against powerful odds (Gilmore, 1990, p. 11). Compared to womanhood, manhood is often viewed as a status that is earned via the passage of social rather than physical or biological milestones (Vandello, Bosson, Cohen, Burnaford, & Weaver, 2008; Vandello & Cohen, 2008). Similarly, the tenuousness of manhood lies in the fact that, once
Authors Note: We thank Joanna Goplen, Stacy Hall, Anh Hua, and Lauren Keroack for their assistance with data collection, and we thank Dov Cohen and several anonymous reviewers for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Please address correspondence to Jennifer K. Bosson, Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL 33620; e-mail: jbosson@cas.usf.edu. PSPB, Vol. 35 No. 5, May 2009 623-634 DOI: 10.1177/0146167208331161 2009 by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

o explain gender differences in the use of physical aggression, gender role theorists often look to the content of gender roles. Because physical aggression is a behavioral ingredient of the male gender role, boys and men are taught to use this behavior more frequently than are girls and women. Here, we take a slightly different approach by considering a structural feature of the male gender role that, we propose, can shed additional light on the links between gender and physical aggression. We propose that manhood, relative to womanhood, is defined culturally as a precarious social status that can be lost fairly easily and thus requires continual, active validation. We further propose that men understand, use, and even benefit from displays of

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624 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN earned, this status can be lost relatively easily via a host of social transgressions and shortcomings. For example, when asked to explain how a person might lose his manhood, students at a large university in the southeastern United States had no difficulty generating reasons pertaining to social shortcomings such as losing a job, being unable to support a family, and letting others down, to name a few (Vandello et al., 2008). Conversely, when asked to explain how a person might lose her womanhood, people found it more difficult to generate responses, and when they did, they mentioned relatively few social reasons and turned instead to physical explanations such as having a hysterectomy or getting a sex-change operation. These findings illustrate that manhood, as compared to womanhood, is perceived as an impermanent state whose legitimacy may be challenged. Why do many cultures define manhood as more precarious than womanhood (Gilmore, 1990)? Whereas a conclusive test of this question is beyond the scope of this article, we offer some possible explanations. First, the precariousness of manhood status might result from evolved adaptations to a social environment in which men competed, through public demonstrations of physical prowess and dominance, for access to fertile female mates (Buss, 1998; Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Geary, 1998; Trivers, 1972). Evolutionary theorists suggest that ancestral males formed status hierarchies (Kenrick & Trost, 2000), and that those with higher status were more likely to attract mates and pass on their genes (Symons, 1995). Given that such hierarchies were not fixed, however, mens position within them could be challenged at any moment. If so, men may have evolved a preoccupation with achieving and maintaining social status along with a heightened sensitivity to social cues indicating a potential or real loss of status. Conversely, ancestral females reproductive success was presumably less tied to their social status (because women had lower fitness variance than men and less intense intrasex competition for mates), which may explain their relatively weaker preoccupation with the possibility of losing status as a real woman. Thus, cultural beliefs about the relative precariousness of manhood may stem from evolved gender differences in attentiveness to and participation in status hierarchies. Another explanation can be found in the social roles that men and women have occupied throughout history. According to biosocial theories (Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Wood, 1999; Wood & Eagly, 2002), cultural stereotypes about the psychological underpinnings of manhood and womanhood arise from long-established divisions of labor. Because men have often occupied social roles that involve status seeking and resource acquisition, manhood itself has come to be associated with qualities such as competitiveness, defensiveness, and constant struggling to publicly prove worth and status. Conversely, because women have often occupied less competitive and less public social roles involving homemaking and childcare, womanhood is not associated as strongly with a motivation to achieve, defend, and prove status. A belief that manhood can be lost, and that it requires continual social proof, may thus reflect peoples tendency to attribute psychological qualities to men and women based on the role-relevant behaviors that are most strongly associated with these groups (see Wood & Eagly, 2002). From our perspective, both evolutionary and biosocial perspectives offer plausible explanations for the tendency to define manhood as a relatively precarious state. Indeed, it is likely that evolutionary and sociocultural factors work in tandem, along with more proximate situational and contextual factors (e.g., Deaux & Major, 1987), to shape cultural definitions of and beliefs about manhood and womanhood. Our goal here is not to pinpoint the cause(s) of precarious manhood but to examine a particular consequence of the motivation to prove manhoodphysical aggression. PRECARIOUS MANHOOD AND PHYSICAL AGGRESSION Although there are numerous actions that men can take to validate or prove their manhood (for examples, see Holmes, 1971; Maass, Cadinu, Guarnieri, & Grasselli, 2003; Schmitt & Branscombe, 2001), the most effective strategies for proving or restoring manhood are those that (a) involve risk taking (which signifies fearlessness), (b) are difficult (and thus hard or costly to fake), and (c) are public and thus visible to others. For these reasons, physical aggression may serve as a highly effective characterestablishing behavior for men (Archer, 1994, 2004; D. Cohen & Vandello, 2001). As such, we propose that demonstrations of physical aggressionor at least displays of readiness to aggress physicallyare part of mens cultural script for maintaining and restoring a gender status that is troublingly precarious (see also M. S. Kimmel & Mahler, 2003; Malamuth, Linz, Heavey, Barnes, & Acker, 1995). This view of physical aggression as being part of mens, but not womens, cultural script for asserting gender status is consistent with ample research documenting mens more frequent use of physical aggression in general (e.g., Bettencourt & Miller, 1996; Eagly & Steffen, 1986; Hyde, 1984; Knight, Guthrie, Page, & Fabes, 2002). More specifically, research has shown that men often use physically aggressive displays to save face and defend their personal honor following

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Bosson et al. / PRECARIOUS MANHOOD AND AGGRESSIVE DISPLAYS 625 threats (Archer, 1994; D. Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, & Schwarz, 1996; D. Cohen, Vandello, Puente, & Rantilla, 1999; Felson, 1978, 1982; Vandello & Cohen, 2003). The current studies extend past research by testing whether men (a) increase their use of physically aggressive displays in response to subtle manhood challenges, and (b) benefit from (i.e., exhibit reduced anxiety following) the use of such displays following a manhood threat. Of course, as suggested above, not all aggression will be equally effective in demonstrating manhood. Compared with physical aggression, indirect or relational aggression (e.g., social exclusion, gossiping, rumor spreading; Bjrkqvist, 1994) is relatively less risky, grueling, and visible, rendering it ill suited to the task of proving manhood. Moreover, relational aggression is generally used more by girls and women than by boys and men (Archer, 2004; Crick & Grotpeter, 1995; Lagerspetz, Bjrkqvist, & Peltonen, 1988), which suggests that the use of this type of aggression in itself may constitute a gender role violation for boys and men. Consistent with this line of reasoning, Vandello et al. (2008) found that feedback that threatened (versus affirmed) mens gender identity increased the accessibility of their thoughts related to physical aggression (e.g., gun, blood, punch) but not relational aggression (e.g., gossip, tease, reject). In contrast, gender-threatening feedback did not increase thoughts pertaining to physical or relational aggression among women. This suggests that challenges to their gender status uniquely activate thoughts related to physical aggression among men. In turn, the heightened accessibility of physical aggressionrelated thoughts and other cognitive knowledge structures (e.g., goals related to restoring manhood, scripts for how to use physical aggression in a given context) may increase the likelihood of actual aggressive behavior (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1990). Although Vandello etal.s findings demonstrated that manhood threats increase mens thoughts related to physical aggression, they stopped short of establishing a direct link between threatened manhood and physically aggressive behavioral tendencies. Thus, two of the studies presented here tested this link using more direct methods. THIS RESEARCH We conducted three experiments that examine the links between precarious manhood and mens displays of readiness for physical aggression. In Studies 1 and 2, we tested whether a public challenge to their manhood statusa videotaped gender role violationheightened mens displays of physically aggressive capabilities by measuring the strength of their punches (Study 1) and their preference for an aggressive over a nonaggressive activity (Study 2). In Study 3, we examined whether a public display of aggressive capability (relative to no display) significantly alleviated mens anxiety-related cognitions following a public gender role violation. If so, this would suggest that physical aggression following manhood threats serves an emotion regulatory function for men by effectively diminishing the anxiety elicited by the threat. STUDY 1 Our goal in Study 1 was to test the causal link between manhood threats and physically aggressive tendencies using more direct methods than past research has employed (e.g., Vandello et al., 2008). Therefore, we threatened some mens gender status and measured their subsequent displays of toughness and capability for physical aggression. To threaten manhood, rather than giving men negative feedback or explicitly insulting their manhood, we took a subtler approach. Specifically, we induced men to perform an ostensibly public, stereotypically feminine hairstyling task. Past research as well as manipulation check data presented in the current Study 3demonstrates that men perceive this as an emasculating task (Bosson, Prewitt-Freilino, & Taylor, 2005). If physically aggressive posturing is part of mens cultural script for restoring threatened manhood, we should observe an increase in mens displays of toughness and readiness to aggress following the gender threat. To test this, we observed mens choice of an aggressive activity (punching a punching pad) versus a masculine but nonaggressive activity (shooting a basketball), and we measured the strength of mens punches. We predicted that men in the gender-threat condition would be more likely to choose the punching task and would punch harder than would men in the no-threat condition. Method Participants and procedure. Thirty-two men participated in exchange for credit toward a course requirement (median age= 20). We deleted data from one man who used the equipment improperly and thus had missing punch impact data, leaving a total of 31 men who self-identified as White (41.9%), Latino (25.8%), Black (16.1%), Arabic (9.7%), Asian American (3.2%), and biracial (3.2%). Participants arrived individually to an experiment whose purpose was described as assessing peoples abilities with novel activities that involve physical coordination. A White, female experimenter explained that the participant would be videotaped while he

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626 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN performed several activities and that his videotape would later be viewed by between 10 and 20 students. This was done to make the activity feel public; no one actually viewed the videotapes. Participants picked a slip of paper from a cup, ostensibly to determine which activity they would do first. Based on random assignment, the experimenter then retrieved either the hairstyling task or the rope-reinforcing task. For the hairstyling task, the experimenter placed a wigged, female mannequins head on the table in front of the participant along with a basket containing a hairbrush, a comb, and several hair bands. For the ropereinforcing task, she placed a basket of rubber bands and a frame made of wooden dowels on the table; attached to the top of the frame were three long strands of rope. Participants in both conditions also received illustrated braiding instructions (see Bosson etal., 2005, for additional details about the braiding tasks). Data reported in Bosson etal. confirm that heterosexual men perceive the hairstyling task as a gender threat and the rope-reinforcing task as gender neutral. Before turning on the video camera and leaving the room, the experimenter explained that the participant would have 5 minutes to do the activity and that he should braid the hair (rope) as many times as he could. After 5 minutes, the experimenter returned and explained that the participant would choose his next activity from between a boxing task, where youll punch a punching bag, and a basketball task, where youll shoot some hoops. The experimenter recorded the participants choice and then started him on his chosen activity. For the boxing task, the experimenter escorted the participant to a lab room containing a video camera, a punching pad that was mounted on a 4-foot-tall heavy bag, and a pair of boxing gloves. The punching pad consisted of a 275 200 mm, battery-operated pressure sensor embedded in several layers of 650 400 20 mm foam rubber, covered with red vinyl. A digital counter at the top of the pad displayed the impact pressure (on a scale from 0 to 250 pounds per square inch) of punches that fell within the designated area above the sensor. The participant put a boxing glove on his dominant hand and stood one arms length from the punching pad, keeping his opposite foot planted on the floor for the duration of the activity. The experimenter then turned on the video camera and instructed the participant to make one practice punch, followed by three official punches. The experimenter recorded the impact score for each punch, and we averaged the three impact scores ( = .83). For the basketball task, the experimenter escorted the participant to a lab room containing a video camera and a plastic wall-mounted basketball hoop. After the experimenter turned on the video camera, the participant had 10 chances to shoot a ball through the hoop from a distance of 7 feet. The experimenter recorded the total number of baskets that the participant made. When the participant finished his chosen activity, the experimenter explained that, because there was still time left in the session, he would now do the other (nonchosen) activity. All participants thus did both activities, allowing us to compare punching impact across conditions. After finishing the second activity, participants completed a brief form that assessed demographic information as well as their prior experience with each of the tasks that they did. Specifically, participants used scales from 1 (none or not at all familiar) to 9 (a lot or very familiar) to answer How much prior experience do you have with that particular activity? and How familiar are you with that particular activity? Participants were then probed for suspicion (none expressed anything more than mild suspicion), debriefed, and excused. Results Activity choice. We expected men whose manhood was threatened to select the physically aggressive punching task more frequently than would those who were not threatened. This hypothesis was not supported. Of men who styled hair, 20% (n = 3) chose the punching task, and of those who reinforced rope, 25% (n = 4) chose the punching task, 2(1, N= 31)< 1. Punching impact. Regardless of which activity men chose, we expected them to demonstrate more aggressive tendencies (i.e., punch the pad harder) in the threat condition than in the no-threat condition. To test this, we submitted average punch impact scores to a one-way ANOVA with threat condition as the independent variable. A significant effect of threat condition emerged such that men who braided hair (M= 38.29, SD= 5.30) punched the pad harder than did men who braided rope (M= 33.85, SD= 5.64), F(1, 29) = 5.08, p < .04, and this difference corresponded to a large effect size, d = 0.81 (J. Cohen, 1992). Controlling for mens prior experience with each activity did not change these results, ps< .04. Note, however, that a small subset of men in each threat condition had a different experience than the majority. Most (75 to 80%) of the men in each condition performed the punching task after the basketball task, whereas relatively few men did the punching task immediately after they braided. To control for the activity that men did prior to the punching task, we ran two covariance analyses. First, when controlling for mens choice of activity (coded as punching = 1, basketball= 2), the effect of threat condition on punching

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Bosson et al. / PRECARIOUS MANHOOD AND AGGRESSIVE DISPLAYS 627 impact still emerged, F(1, 28)= 4.82, p< .04, d= 0.79, and choice was not a significant covariate, F < 1. Second, to rule out the possibility that mens performance on the basketball task influenced how forcefully they hit the punching pad, we controlled for the number of baskets (out of 10) that men made. Again, the effect of threat condition emerged, F(1, 28) = 5.00, p < .04, d = 0.80, and number of baskets was not a significant covariate, F< 1. Summary As predicted, men demonstrated a heightened readiness for physical aggression following a threat to manhood. Specifically, men who publicly violated their gender role by performing a stereotypically feminine activity subsequently threw harder punches than did men who performed a gender-neutral activity. Of course, hitting a pad does not constitute an act of aggression, given that it does not involve intention to harm another individual. Nonetheless, we view the punching task as a highly face valid, behavioral display of aggressive readiness and capability. Although threatened men exhibited heightened aggression on the punching task, they did not demonstrate the predicted preference for the aggressive task over the nonaggressive task. It is possible that men felt able to restore their threatened manhood by choosing either task, given that both punching and basketball are masculine activities. Indeed, a separate sample of men rated both punching a punching bag (M = 5.88) and shooting hoops (M = 5.76) significantly above the midpoint on a scale from 1 (not at all masculine) to 7 (very masculine), ts(16) > 6.00, ps < .001, and as equal to each other in masculinity, t < 1. We initially chose basketball as the alternate activity because we wanted to test whether gender-threatened men would prefer an aggressive task over one that was equally masculine but nonaggressive. Our findings, however, led to a refinement of our thesis: If another viable (and familiar) route to re-establishing manhood is available, men may choose not to aggress. Conversely, if physical aggression is the only masculine alternative available after a gender threat, men should choose it. We tested this logic in Study 2. masculine) to 7 (very masculine), confirmed that punching is seen as more masculine than puzzles, Ms = 5.88 vs. 2.94, t(16) = 8.70, p < .001. We, therefore, predicted that threatened men, given no masculine alternative with which to restore manhood, would choose the physically aggressive punching task more frequently than would nonthreatened men. Method Participants and procedure. Forty-five men participated in exchange for credit toward a course requirement (median age= 19). Participantswho self-identified as White (55.6%), Latino (20%), Black (15.6%), and Asian American (8.9%)were randomly assigned to braid either hair or rope. The procedure was identical to that used in Study 1 with two small exceptions. First, after participants finished the braiding activity, a White, female experimenter offered them a choice between a boxing task, where youll punch a punching bag and a puzzle task, where youll rearrange several puzzle pieces into the shape of a square. Second, unlike in Study 1, participants did not actually perform either activity; the experimenter simply recorded participants choice of activity and then debriefed and excused them. Results and Summary We expected threatened men to select the aggressive punching task more frequently than would nonthreatened men. A chi-square analysis on activity choice revealed the predicted pattern: Among men in the no-threat condition, only 22% (n = 5) chose the punching task; however, among men in the threat condition, more than twice as many (50%; n = 11) chose the punching task, 2(1, N = 45) = 3.92, p < .05, d = 0.62. Thus, when presented with a choice between a masculine aggression task and a nonmasculine puzzle task, gender-threatened men were more likely than were nonthreatened men to choose the aggressive task. Note, of course, that only half of the gender-threatened men chose to display their aggressive readiness with the punching task. Indeed, collapsing across threat conditions, almost two thirds of all participants opted for the nonaggressive puzzle task. When considered in conjunction with the findings from Study 1, these data suggest that physically aggressive displays are certainly not the default response among gender-threatened men. Nonetheless, our findings thus far indicate that mens aggressive displays become substantially more likely to the extent that other means of restoring manhood are less attractive and/or effective.

STUDY 2 In Study 2, we threatened some mens manhood with the same hairstyling task used in Study 1, and then we offered them a choice of two follow-up activities: punching a punching bag or doing a brainteaser puzzle. Pilot ratings of these tasks, on scales of 1 (not at all

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628 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN STUDY 3 The findings thus far demonstrate that reminders of the precariousness of their manhood increase mens motivation to engage in displays of aggressive readiness. An important question that remains, however, is whether such displays successfully downregulate the anxiety that arises among men who undergo manhood threats. If aggression is indeed part of mens cultural script for restoring threatened manhood, then men who display aggressive tendencies following a gender threat might be expected to benefit from their actions. Having effectively communicated their manhood to observers, such men may feel less anxious than would gender-threatened men who do not act out the cultural script for restoring manhood. To test these ideas in Study 3, we threatened mens manhood with the same hairstyling task used in Studies 1 and 2, and we allowed some of them to restore their manhood by way of the punching task. Other men did not punch after the hairstyling task. We then assessed anxiety-relevant cognitions among participants in both of these conditions as well as among a separate group of control participants who neither styled hair nor punched. Our measure of anxiety-relevant cognitions was a word-completion task in which several words could be completed in either an anxious or a nonanxious manner. We used a word-completion task rather than a more straightforward measure of self-reported anxiety because we suspect that admitting feelings of anxiety might, in itself, threaten manhood. Moreover, past work suggests that this word completion task effectively measures peoples automatic, anxiety-relevant thoughts (Vandello etal., 2008). We predicted that men who violated their gender role and did not display their readiness to aggress would reveal heightened anxiety-relevant cognitions relative to baseline; in contrast, men who violated their gender role and subsequently displayed aggressive readiness should effectively downregulate their anxiety to baseline levels. Method Participants and procedure. Sixty men participated in exchange for credit toward a course requirement (median age = 19). Participants self-identified as White (45%), Latino (20%), Asian American (16.7%), Black (8.3%), Arabic (5%), and biracial (5%). After signing informed consent forms, participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions. In the threat aggression and threatno-aggression conditions, men learned that the purpose of the study was to assess peoples abilities with novel activities. A White or Asian American female experimenter then explained that participants would be videotaped while they performed several activities and that their videotapes would later be viewed by others. Unlike in the prior studies, there was no rope activity condition in Study 3; thus, all participants in the threataggression and threatnoaggression conditions completed the hairstyling task. After participants finished braiding, the experimenter led them into an adjoining room to complete the next activity, which was described as a boxing task. At this point, the procedure differed for men in the threat aggression and threatno-aggression conditions. In the threataggression condition, men were videotaped while they made one practice punch and three official punches. The experimenter recorded the impact of mens punches, just as in Study 1. In the threatno-aggression condition, after learning about the boxing task, men watched as the experimenter tried, unsuccessfully, to turn on the punching pads digital counter. The experimenter fiddled with the button on the punching pad for a moment, and then said The sensor has been acting up for a whileIm not sure how to fix it, so Ill just have you do the final task for today. After either boxing or not boxing, men in the threat aggression and threatno-aggression conditions did a word completion task in which seven word stems (e.g., STRE __ __) could be completed in either an anxious (e.g., STRESS) or a nonanxious (e.g., STREET) manner. The seven words were stress, threat, shame, loser, bother, weak, and upset (Vandello etal., 2008). Scores were computed as a percentage of total possible words that were completed in an anxious manner. Next, participants rated their prior experience and familiarity with the hairstyling task on scales from 1 (none or not at all familiar) to 9 (a lot or very familiar), and they indicated how masculine the hairstyling task was on a scale from 1 (not at all masculine) to 9 (very masculine). Men in the threataggression condition also used the same scale to indicate how masculine the boxing activity was. Finally, men in these two conditions provided some demographic information and received a debriefing. In the baseline condition, men arrived at the lab, gave their consent to participate in the study, and then immediately completed the word completion task. They then provided some demographic information and were excused. Results Manipulation checks. Men in the threataggression and threatno-aggression conditions did not differ in their perceptions of how masculine the hairstyling activity was, Ms= 1.95 vs. 2.26, SDs= 1.27 and 1.49, t< 1. Moreover, men in both of these conditions rated the hairstyling activity significantly below the scale midpoint

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Bosson et al. / PRECARIOUS MANHOOD AND AGGRESSIVE DISPLAYS 629 in masculinity, ts > 8.00, ps < .001. In contrast, men in the threataggression condition rated the boxing activity significantly above the scale midpoint in masculinity (M = 8.26, SD = 0.87), t(18) = 16.13, p < .001. These data indicate that participants perceived both the gender threat and gender restoration activities in the manner we intended. Primary analyses. We predicted a pattern in which gender-threatened men who did not display aggressive capacity would reveal more anxiety on the word completion task than would both gender-threatened men who displayed aggressive capacity and nonthreatened men. To test this prediction, we conducted a contrast analysis (J. Cohen & Cohen, 1983). The first contrast code (+2, 1, 1) pitted the threatno-aggression condition against the combined threataggression and baseline conditions. The second contrast code (0, 1, +1) compared the threataggression condition to the baseline condition. Thus, the first contrast tested our specific pattern of predicted means, and the second contrast tested whether gender threatened men who successfully followed the cultural script for restoring manhood differed from baseline. We regressed the percentage of anxious word completions onto the two contrast codes in a simultaneous multiple regression analysis. As predicted, the first contrast code was significantly related to anxious word completions, t(57) = 2.02, p < .05, d = 0.53; conversely, the second contrast code was not significant, t< 1. Figure 1 displays the average percentages of anxious word completions for each condition: Whereas men appeared relatively anxious when they violated their gender role and did not subsequently perform a public, aggressive activity, men who punched after a gender threat displayed anxiety levels that did not differ from baseline. To ensure that the observed anxiety differences following a gender threat did not merely reflect differences in participants comfort or familiarity with the hairstyling activity, we conducted another analysis in which we controlled for prior experiences with hairstyling. Mens ratings of prior experience and familiarity with the braiding task were strongly correlated, r(36) = .71, p < .001, so we averaged them to create a composite index. We then regressed anxious word completions onto prior experience and condition (coded 0, 1). Note that this analysis only included men in the threataggression and threatno-aggression conditions, as these were the only participants who completed the hairstyling activity and, therefore, rated their prior experiences with it. Controlling for prior experience, anxious word completions differed significantly between men in the threataggression and

40 35 % Anxious Word Completions 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Hairstyling/Boxing Hairstyling/No boxing Baseline

Figure 1 Percentage of anxious word completions as a function of gender role threat (hairstyling) and aggressive display (boxing).

threatno-aggression conditions, t(35) = 2.03, p = .05, d= 0.69.1 These two conditions also differed significantly when the covariate was removed from the analysis, t(37)= 2.03, p= .05, d= 0.67. Partial test of the proposed mechanism. Our logic suggests that men in the threataggression condition, relative to the threatno-aggression condition, revealed less anxiety on the word completion task because they restored their manhood via the public punching task. Although we lack direct evidence that perceptions of having restored their manhood reduced mens anxiety in the threataggression condition, a test of the correlation between punching impact and anxious word completions allowed a partial test of our ideas about the proposed mechanism. If our logic is correct, then men who punched the punching pad with greater forceand thereby demonstrated particularly impressive capacity to aggressshould reveal fewer anxiety-relevant cognitions on the word completion task. Indeed, the correlation between mens average punching impact across the three videotaped punches ( = .95) and the percentage of words they completed in an anxiety-relevant manner was marginally significant, r(18) = .38, p < .10. Inspection of the scatterplot revealed that this correlation was not driven by outliers. Thus, had our sample been larger, this moderate correlation would likely have reached statistical significance. Moreover, when looking separately at mens practice punches and their three official punches, an interesting pattern emerged. First, the correlation between punching impact and anxious word completions was relatively weak for the practice punch, r(18) = .15, p = .52, but

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630 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN it became stronger during the three nonpractice punches. This trend approached significance during the first punch, r(18)= .40, p< .08, and then weakened during the second and third punches, r(18)s = .35 and .33, ps< .13 and .16, respectively. Moreover, the association between impact on the first real punch and anxious word completions reached significance when impact on the practice punch was partialled out, r(17) = .54, p < .02. Thus, although it would be premature to draw firm conclusions based on these data, these patterns suggest that men treated their first real punch as their most important opportunity to restore threatened manhood. To the extent that they demonstrated greater aggressive capacity during this punch, they also exhibited fewer subsequent anxiety-relevant cognitions. GENERAL DISCUSSION The results presented here provide converging evidence for our thesis that physically aggressive displays are part of mens cultural script for maintaining and restoring threatened manhood. Specifically, when their manhood status was challenged by a public gender role threat, men reacted with heightened aggressive tendencies by punching a pad with greater force (Study 1) and selecting a boxing activity over a nonaggressive puzzle activity (Study 2). Moreover, Study 3 showed that punching following a gender threat significantly downregulated mens anxious reactions to the threat. Viewed from the perspective of our precarious manhood hypothesis, these findings suggest that men understand, use, and benefit from displays of physical aggression as a means for demonstrating manliness. Understanding Male Aggression Several theories of masculinity emphasize the anxious strain that men experience as a result of continual pressures to prove their manhood (e.g., Eisler & Skidmore, 1987; ONeil, Helms, Gable, David, & Wrightsman, 1986; Pleck, 1981, 1995). Like others (e.g., Malamuth etal., 1995), we believe that many acts of male aggression can be understood as a response to this anxiety. Moreover, past research suggests that men seem to understand their own aggression in these terms. For example, whereas women tend to view their aggression as a temporary loss of self-control that erupts into an antisocial act, men tend to perceive their aggression as a way of exercising control over their situation, especially when provoked by challenges to their self-esteem or integrity (Archer & Haigh, 1997; Astin, Redston, & Campbell, 2003; Campbell & Muncer, 1987, 1994). Moreover, compared to women, men more often perceive resorting to violence as a positive experience (Campbell & Muncer, 1987). Our findings may shed light on why men sometimes view their aggression as a positive means of imposing controlthey may recognize that by using aggression they can achieve the goal of establishing or restoring manhood. In doing so, they may also regulate their own negative affective reactions to threatened manhood. As such, the use of physical aggression, or even tough posturing that indicates a readiness to aggress, may provide temporary relief from mens gender role anxieties. The results presented here are consistent with this logic. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated that men exhibit heightened aggressive tendencies when their own gender status is called into question. Men in these studies exhibited more aggressive posturing (i.e., they punched harder and selected a punching task more frequently) after performing, in public, a gender roleviolating task as compared to a gender-neutral task. Whereas being induced to perform a hairstyling task might not, at first glance, seem like a direct manhood threat, past research suggests that men find this activity emasculating (e.g., Bosson etal., 2005; Prewitt-Freilino & Bosson, 2008). Indeed, men appear to interpret this activity as just the sort of manhood challenge that requires reparative displays of physical toughness. Notably, men who styled hair exhibited heightened aggressive tendencies even in the absence of both a specific provoker and a specific act of provocation, which suggests that their aggressive displays were not retaliatory but rather instrumental because they accomplished the goal of restoring manhood. The instrumental utility of aggressive displays was demonstrated further by our findings from Study 3. Here we found that gender-threatened men who displayed physical toughness (the boxing task) exhibited less anxiety than did gender-threatened men who did not display toughness. Thus, completion of the cultural script for validating threatened manhood successfully restored mens anxiety to baseline levels, whereas disruption of the script left men experiencing heightened anxiety-relevant cognitions. This suggests that displays of toughness and aggressive capability serve an emotion regulatory function for men by alleviating the negative affect that arises when manhood is challenged. These findings provide the first evidence, to our knowledge, of the immediate psychological consequences to men of physically aggressive displays following a gender threat. Of course, it is important to note that we did not measure actual physical aggression in the experiments presented here but instead used a measure of physically aggressive tendencies. In part, this design decision reflects the obvious difficulties of measuring, in the lab,

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Bosson et al. / PRECARIOUS MANHOOD AND AGGRESSIVE DISPLAYS 631 behaviors that are intended to harm others physically. Researchers have generated a host of clever methods for measuring peoples aggressive tendencies toward specific otherssuch as offering them hot sauce (Lieberman, Solomon, & Greenberg, 1999), blasting them with white noise (Peterson, Shackman, & Harmon-Jones, 2008), and showing them disturbing images (Mussweiler & Frster, 2000)but many of these lack the physicality that we were interested in. In selecting the punching activity, we prioritized the physical aspect of physical aggression but sacrificed the (ostensible) target of the aggression. Thus, although our findings reveal that men respond to gender threats with physical displays of aggressive capability, we do not know whether these findings would generalize to situations involving real opportunities for physical aggression against others. Note, however, that broad cognitive-affective models of aggression suggest that aggressive cognitions, aggressive affect, and physiological arousal each contributes directly and independently to increases in the likelihood of actual aggressive behavior (Anderson, 1997; Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1990; Lindsay & Anderson, 2000). Based on these models, then, we suggest that the current findings should have some bearing on behavioral physical aggression because of the effects of both aggression-relevant thoughts and physiological arousal on aggressive behavior. First, our past findings illustrate that threats to their manhood heightened the accessibility of cognitions relevant to physical aggression among men (Vandello et al., 2008). Specifically, men who received feedback that challenged versus affirmed their manhood subsequently completed more than twice as many words in a physically aggressive manner (e.g., punch, stab, murder) on a word completion task. Thus, if an unpleasant situational experiencesuch as a threat to manhood activates cognitions related to aggression, it should also heighten the likelihood of actual physical aggression (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Berkowitz, 1990; Lindsay & Anderson, 2000). Second, if gender identity threats increase the likelihood and intensity of physically aggressive posturing, as the current results suggest they do, then they may also increase the likelihood of aggressive behavior through their effects on physiological arousal. Consider that the punching task used here, along with many of the behaviors that men use to restore or maintain manhood, involves physical exertion and thus heightens physiological arousal. Heightened arousal, in turn, increases the likelihood of aggressive behavior, particularly when situational factors provide a reason for releasing such behavior (e.g., Zillmann, 1988; Zillmann, Katcher, & Milavsky, 1972). Furthermore, findings from the domestic violence literature point to links between threatened manhood and increased husband-to-wife abuse. For example, occupational stressorssuch as demotion, job loss, and trouble with superiorsconsistently emerge as predictors of mens violence toward their female partners (e.g., Barnett & Fagan, 1993; Cano & Vivian, 2003). Moreover, in cultures in which mens reputation and honor are damaged by female adultery, husband-to-wife violence occurs relatively frequently (e.g., Ellsberg, Caldera, Herrera, Winkvist, & Kullgren, 1999) and is viewed as an acceptable response to infidelity (e.g., Vandello & Cohen, 2003). These correlational findings are consistent with our argument that men, at times, use physical aggression to restore threatened manhood. Thus, despite our reliance on markers of aggressive posturing rather than direct aggression per se, we believe that there are sound theoretical and empirical bases for assuming that the findings presented here can shed light on mens use of actual behavioral aggression. Limitations and Future Directions Of course, several limitations of this work deserve mention. Perhaps most importantly, the findings from Study 1 compelled us to reformulate our thesis because gender threatened men did not display a preference for the aggressive boxing task over the nonaggressive (but equally masculine) basketball task. And even among gender-threatened men in Study 2, for whom the physically aggressive boxing task was the only masculine option, only half chose this task. Given our suggestion that physically aggressive displays are part of mens cultural script for restoring threatened manhood, these findings require some attention. One possible explanation is that the cultural script for restoring threatened manhood includes a variety of behavioral options and that physically aggressive displays become less attractive when men perceive that other behaviors will do the job just as effectively. In particular, nonaggressive means of restoring challenged manhood may be preferred over aggressive ones if the former are seen as more familiar, more predictable, or easier to implement with competence. This may have been the case with the basketball task in Study 1, given that pilot participants reported significantly more prior experience with shooting hoops than with boxing, Ms= 6.87 vs. 4.98, t(30)= 4.19, p< .001. If gender-threatened men are motivated to convey an impression of competence and control, then a familiar task may be a safer bet than an unfamiliar one, no matter how aggressive and manly the latter is. Another possibility is that there was something about the particular boxing task we used here that participants found off-putting. Recall that the task required participants to don boxing gloves and then punch a

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632 PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN foam-rubber pad while an experimenter recorded their impact data onto a clipboard. Perhaps the theatricality of this task made participants self-conscious, and their feelings of self-consciousness overrode the shame elicited by the manhood challenge. If so, then the men who chose the boxing activity may have been those for whom the humiliation of the manhood threat exceeded their shyness about playing the boxer role. Regardless of why the punching activity was less popular than we expected, our findings suggest that physically aggressive posturing is by no means a normative reaction to threatened manhood. Therefore, an important direction for future research involves clarifying the conditions under which threats to manhood status compel men to pursue active displays of readiness to aggress. Another direction for future research involves identifying whether some targets are particularly likely to inspire aggression or aggressive displays among gender-threatened men. Some past work suggests that manhood threats might increase mens aggression toward gender-deviant targetsthat is, people who violate traditional gender role normsmore readily than toward gender-normative targets. For example, although they did not measure aggression, Glick and his colleagues found that a manhood threat increased mens negative affective reactions toward feminine gay men but not toward masculine gay men (Glick, Gangl, Gibb, Klumpner, & Weinberg, 2007). More relevant to these studies, Maass etal. (2003) found that gender-threatened men subsequently exhibited more aggression (i.e., sexual harassment) toward a feminist woman than a traditional woman. Importantly, men appeared to benefit from their sexual harassment of the feminist, in that those who harassed subsequently reported stronger identification with their gender ingroup. Thus, to the extent that gender-threatened men retaliate against gender-deviant targets more readily than gendernormative ones, they may do so because they recognize, on some level, that aggression against such targets will most effectively accomplish the goal of restoring threatened manhood. Of course, this possibility requires additional investigation. This brings us to another limitation of these studies. Despite our speculation that threats to mens gender status motivate aggressive posturing via their effects on mens concerns about precarious manhood, we included no direct index of these concerns. The closest we came was the measure of anxiety-relevant cognitions in Study 3. Whereas the findings with this anxiety index make the important point that aggressive displays alleviate mens anxious cognitions following a gender threat, they fall short of establishing that concerns about manhood status are the mechanism through which public gender role violations increase mens anxiety in the first place. Documenting this link, therefore, remains a profitable direction for future work. One promising approach involves assessing gender identity with an implicit measure such as the Implicit Association Test (e.g., Rudman, Dohn, & Fairchild, 2007). For example, threats to their manhood should weaken mens cognitive associations between the self and stereotypically masculine stimuli, whereas physically aggressive posturing should strengthen these associations. Such findings would add considerably to researchers understanding of the links between precarious manhood and aggressive displays. Summary and Conclusions The studies presented here build on recent research on the precarious nature of manhood (Vandello et al., 2008). Specifically, these findings show that men understand, use, and benefit from physically aggressive displays as means of maintaining and restoring their manhood status, particularly when that status has been challenged. An understanding of the precariousness of manhood can help shed light on what might otherwise be seen as irrational or excessive aggression arising from seemingly trivial provocations. From our perspective, the immediate proximal causes of male aggression are often tied to broader concerns with social status and self-worth. Given the precarious and easily challenged status of manhood, it is not surprising that men perceive a regular need to validate their masculine credentials, sometimes by engaging in physically aggressive displays. Future work should examine the conditions under which such aggressive displays translate into actual aggression. Note
1. There are only 35 degrees of freedom for this analysis instead of 36 because one participant did not rate his prior experience and familiarity with the hairstyling task.

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Received April 13, 2008 Revision accepted November 23, 2008

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