The aims of this study were to investigate the social constructionist proposition that masculinity varies according to social context and the relationship, in men, between masculinity ideology and alexithymia. Women tended to endorse a less traditional view of masculinity than did men, and European Americans tended to endorse a less traditional view of masculinity than did African Americans, with Hispanics from the Caribbean and the United States in the middle. A relationship between masculinity ideology and alexithymia in men was established, and, even after controlling for demographic variables, masculinity ideology accounted for unique variance in alexithymia in men.Gender roles have an enormous influence on how individuals function both intra-and interpersonally (Jakupcak, Lisak, & Roemer, 2002;Silverstein, Auerbach, & Levant, 2002). Pleck (1981) postulated that the gender role identity paradigm, which dominated research on gender from 1930 to 1980, does not adequately account for the formation of gender roles. According to the gender role identity paradigm, gender roles develop as a result of an inner psychological need to have a sex-appropriate gender role identity, and optimal personality development depends on the construction of sex-appropriate gender role identity (Pleck, 1981). In contrast to the gender role identity paradigm, the new psychology of men relies on the gender role strain paradigm, a social constructionist perspective, to account for the formation of gender roles. In this view, prevailing gender ideologies, which vary according to psychological, historical, social, and political contexts, serve to influence parents, teachers, and peers, who, in turn, socialize children according to the prevailing gender role ideologies.The gender role strain paradigm recognizes biological differences between men and women but argues that concepts of "masculinity" and "femininity" are not constructed by biology (Levant, 1996b;Levant & Pollack, 1995). Rather, gender roles are formed to serve particular purposes within any given society; namely, gender roles maintain the system of power relations between males and females in a social group. Traditional gender role socialization serves to uphold patriarchal codes by requiring that males adopt dominant and aggressive behaviors and function in the public sphere, while requiring that females adopt adaptive and nurturing behaviors and function in the private sphere of the family (Levant, 1996b).

Although both gender and race differences in masculinity ideology were significant, gender had a larger effect size. Study 2, focused on the effect of residence in different geographic regions of the country, compared the MRNI scores of the more metropolitan Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic sample of the present study with those of the more rural Southern sample used by Levant and Majors. This study found that the effect of geographic place of residence moderates the effect of race on masculinity ideology, which underscores the importance of subcultural variations (e.g., metropolitan vs. rural) within cultural groups defined by race.• male gender role * masculinity ideology • African American

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