Men of Honor: Examining Individual Differences in Masculine Honor Beliefs

Slurs against masculinity: masculine honor beliefs and men's reactions to slurs

“…Items were averaged for each participant so that higher scores represented more adherence to masculine honor beliefs comprehensively as an overall composite score (a ¼ .94), as well as for each of the subscales (as > .71). Previous research has demonstrated the MHBS's internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and validity in predicting aggressive responses to provocation (Saucier and McManus, 2014;Saucier et al, in preparation).…”

“…We administered the Masculine Honor Beliefs Scale (Saucier and McManus, 2014;Saucier et al, in preparation) to assess the participants' adherence to masculine honor beliefs. This scale was created based on the conceptualization of masculine honor within the culture of honor of the American South (Cohen, 1998;Cohen and Nisbett, 1997;Cohen et al, 1996Cohen et al, , 1998Nisbett, 1993).…”

“…Men completed the Masculine Honor Beliefs Scale (MHBS; Saucier and McManus, 2014) and also rated how offended they would be, and how likely they would be to respond physically, if they were targeted by homophobic, feminine, bravery, general personality, intelligence, and physical slurs. While we predicted that men's higher levels of masculine honor beliefs will likely be associated with greater perceptions of offensiveness and greater reported likelihoods of physical responses to slurs of all categories, we predicted that the relationships would be stronger when the men were targeted by slurs that targeted their masculinity (i.e., homophobic, feminine, and bravery slurs) than when the men were targeted by slurs that did not directly target their masculinity (i.e., general personality, intelligence, and physical slurs).…”

“…These components consisted of masculine courage, pride in manhood, socialization, virtue, protection, provocation, and family/community bonds. Accordingly, Saucier and McManus (2014) assert that full realization of masculine honor as defined in the American South would require that men act bravely, assert their masculinity, have been socialized about the norms dictating masculine honor, hold their masculine honor beliefs as core moral values, act to defend others from threats, act to defend themselves from insult, and be firmly connected to family and community. Thus, their assessment method is more comprehensive in its focus on masculine honor than that provided by the previous research (Barnes et al, 2012;Rodriquez Mosquera et al, 2002b;Vandello et al, 2009), and allows us to examine how the various components of masculine honor may instigate more negative perceptions of and more physically aggressive responses to being threatened by slurs against men and masculinity.…”

“…Thus, their assessment method is more comprehensive in its focus on masculine honor than that provided by the previous research (Barnes et al, 2012;Rodriquez Mosquera et al, 2002b;Vandello et al, 2009), and allows us to examine how the various components of masculine honor may instigate more negative perceptions of and more physically aggressive responses to being threatened by slurs against men and masculinity. For these reasons, we chose the measure by Saucier and McManus (2014) to operationalize the masculine honor beliefs of the men in our current research.…”