Proving Your Manhood Could Lead to Earlier Death, Study Finds

It turns out toxic masculinity can have debilitating effects on your health. A new study out of the University of South Florida sought to find just how far men will go to defend their manhood and found that in some cases, it results in behaviors that lead to earlier death. 

A research team led by Jennifer Bosson and Joseph Vandello sought to build on a study they conducted earlier this year of men and women in 62 countries evaluating their perceptions of manhood. They judged and compiled the respondents’ answers to statements like “Some boys do not become men no matter how old they get,” “It is fairly easy for a man to lose his status as a man,” and “Manhood is not assured—it can be lost.” Kosovo, Albania, and Iran had the most men defending their manhood, while Finland, Spain, and Germany had the least.

With the new study, the team set out to find how beliefs about manhood might lead to men participating in more risky behavior in order to prove their manhood to others—and even themselves. To do this, the researchers compared countrywide scores on beliefs of what they called “precarious manhood”; this included risky behaviors like smoking, binge drinking, or dealing with venomous animals and health outcomes often associated or attributed to high-risk behaviors like liver failure, cancer, or premature death. 

In the end, they found that the men in countries with stronger beliefs about precarious manhood had much higher rates of risk-taking and worse physical health than those in countries with weaker beliefs. These men also lived significantly shorter lives when their manhood was challenged, living almost seven years less on average than men in countries with weaker beliefs about precarious manhood.

“When you start to aggregate together a lot of little health behaviors related to precarious manhood beliefs, you see these strong patterns—and really strong patterns when you look at longevity, specifically,” Vandello said of the findings, stating plainly, “A belief in precarious manhood is bad for health.”

Vandello concluded that society-wide changes around the perceptions of manhood and masculinity is probably Americans’ best hope to prevent health outcomes related to precarious manhood. “Our culture endorses the idea that manhood is something that has to be earned, and our men’s physical health is not so great compared to other comparably rich countries,” he said. “The implications for this is that we’ve got a lot of work to do.”

So, if you see another man jump off a bridge, ask yourself if it’s worth it to do the same just to prove you can.