Social Psychology in the Information Age: Is fragile masculinity related to voting preferences in the US?

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Is fragile masculinity related to voting preferences in the US?

The tentative answer appears to be that it might be. Regions where search terms associated with fragile masculinity (e.g., "erectile dysfunction", "how to get girls") appeared to be ones that also voted for Trump by higher margins in 2016. The pattern does not seem to apply to prior Presidential cycles (2008, 2012). The authors also conducted a preregistered study examining if this pattern could be extended to Congressional electoral cycles and it appears that at least for the 2018 cycle the answer is tentatively yes. This is correlational research, and the authors don't try to make causal claims, which is to their credit. What to make of this set of findings? I am not really sure yet. File this one under curiosities.

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About

Hi! I am A. James Benjamin, Jr., PhD. Most folks call me James or JB eventually.

I am an educator trained as a social psychologist. I work as an Associate Professor at University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. I earned my PhD from University of Missouri-Columbia in 2000. Much of my research has touched on cognitive and behavioral effects of aggression-related cues (e.g., video games and weapon images), increasingly from a critical and skeptical perspective. I have also examined person variables such as authoritarianism and short-term media exposure in relation to attitudes toward violence and toward torture. My more recent interests involve the psychometric properties of various measures of aggressive cognition that are commonly used by aggression researchers. My work intersects with that of related researchers in areas such as Media Communication.

As an educator, I primarily teach methodology courses and the undergraduate survey course in social psychology. I also regularly teach the introductory psychology course. I make a point of introducing students at all levels to the replication crisis. Increasingly, I am trying interactive activities to engage students to become more critical readers of the research literature in my field.

I use this blog to express my own professional and personal perspectives. This blog is completely independent of any organizations with which I am affiliated. Assume that the views I express here are exclusively mine and do not reflect the views of any employer.