Not many people realise this, but there is a huge pile of flawed research suggesting that masculinity prevents men from seeking help. A closer look at the literature shows that masculinity has a small influence on help-seeking but mainly on young men. Moreover some evidence suggests masculinity can be helpful for men's help seeking. Masculinity research is a field where the huge volume of flawed evidence swamps out anything positive, and the vast bulk of funding goes to research aimed at magnifying the prevailing negative of masculinity.
Is this THE John Barry? If so, I love your research and I love your comment. We have a shared perspective. My dissertation was on developing and validating a positive masculinity scale. I cited your research a great deal. I don't know if I as easily dismiss the existing literature as you do, but I respect your critiques. I also cited Ferguson research. I was a member of APA Division 51 when Ferguson published his article. It was fascinating seeing their response to his article. There was literally no serious engagement with his arguments or critiques. They were quick to demonize him and dismiss anything he had to say. I left the division right after that.
Dr. Barry, this comes from total respect for you and your work. But when you say flawed, I would probably say one-sided, and the positive dimension is under-examined. I drew from the research of Arciniega, and Ojeda and Pina-Watson, in their research into positive masculinity among Mexican and Mexican American men. I should also note, I'm not a psychologist, I'm a counselor. At least the APA has division 51, as flawed as it is. The ACA has nothing. I just started a men's mental health and counseling interest group through the Association for Counselor Educators and Supervisors. It's not much, but it's a start.
Hi Dan. Many thanks for your kind words and appreciation of my work. I would argue that one-sided research is flawed research, but more than that, lots of research in masculinity suffers from a 'paradigm fixation' characterised by negative definitions of masculinity (e.g. misogynist, homophobic), and sample bias (mostly young men). There are other issues too e.g. using composite outcomes instead of subscales. The list goes on.
But well done on setting up your interest group. I would be very interested to hear how it is going e.g. the kind of things counselors find most useful about your grou.
I agree with many of your points, especially about using global scores and missing the nuances found when looking at subscales. Much of the research is correlational, ignores the influence of biology, ignores evolutionary psychology, has an ideological bias, and ignores the mixed findings (when looking at the subscales, and how some subscales predict positive outcomes). The reason I don't dismiss the masculinity literature to date, even with its one-sidedness, is that in my research, where I developed a positive masculinity scale, I too found mixed findings when looking at the positive dimension of masculinity. It seems that whether you look at the positive dimension, there are mixed findings with some facets of masculinity correlating with positive outcomes and other facets correlating with poor outcomes. Conversely, when looking at the maladaptive side (such as the CMNI, GRCS, MGRS), there are again mixed findings with some facets of masculinity correlating with positive outcomes and other facets correlating with poor outcomes. So, it seems to me, either perspective results in mixed findings.
Could you provide some links to the literature you've found that suggests the opposite point of view? I'd be interested in delving into the other side of the argument
Hi Rory. Great that you are willing to look at alternative perspectives - I wish more people did so. My textbook Perspectives in Male Psychology, sections 11.4, 11.5 and 12.3 touch on these points, as do other parts of the book. I would recommend the Centre for Male Psychology online course which expands on these issues, and the video format helps make the points clearer. If your budget is tight, you might be able get Perspectives from your library, and there are lots of free articles in Male Psychology magazine (via the CMP website).
From the literature you've presented, we can see strong negative correlation between traditional masculinity and seeking help. Could this be viewed as an overdone strength? Is there any literature studying the relationship between traditional masculinity and resilience to stress, or minor problems? My thought process is that holding a traditionally masculine persona may help men cope with minor issues, but when it comes to larger issues, continuing to hold this persona becomes less and less useful to the point of being harmful (eg, not seeing a doctor about chest pains).
I really like your comment of overdone strength. I take an Aristotelian view that a virtue in excess comes a vice, so you might be one to something. The problem is, how do you test a hypothesis like that? But from a theoretical standpoint, I like the idea and would like to work out the details of something like that in a model/theory.
The second part of your comment, I would say it's fairly complex. Some older research used to think of gender as a personality type in essence, a gendered personality. And with personality traits, the way a person behaves through the lens of that trait is quite context-dependent making it difficult to predict or quantify.
Not many people realise this, but there is a huge pile of flawed research suggesting that masculinity prevents men from seeking help. A closer look at the literature shows that masculinity has a small influence on help-seeking but mainly on young men. Moreover some evidence suggests masculinity can be helpful for men's help seeking. Masculinity research is a field where the huge volume of flawed evidence swamps out anything positive, and the vast bulk of funding goes to research aimed at magnifying the prevailing negative of masculinity.
Is this THE John Barry? If so, I love your research and I love your comment. We have a shared perspective. My dissertation was on developing and validating a positive masculinity scale. I cited your research a great deal. I don't know if I as easily dismiss the existing literature as you do, but I respect your critiques. I also cited Ferguson research. I was a member of APA Division 51 when Ferguson published his article. It was fascinating seeing their response to his article. There was literally no serious engagement with his arguments or critiques. They were quick to demonize him and dismiss anything he had to say. I left the division right after that.
Dr. Barry, this comes from total respect for you and your work. But when you say flawed, I would probably say one-sided, and the positive dimension is under-examined. I drew from the research of Arciniega, and Ojeda and Pina-Watson, in their research into positive masculinity among Mexican and Mexican American men. I should also note, I'm not a psychologist, I'm a counselor. At least the APA has division 51, as flawed as it is. The ACA has nothing. I just started a men's mental health and counseling interest group through the Association for Counselor Educators and Supervisors. It's not much, but it's a start.
Hi Dan. Many thanks for your kind words and appreciation of my work. I would argue that one-sided research is flawed research, but more than that, lots of research in masculinity suffers from a 'paradigm fixation' characterised by negative definitions of masculinity (e.g. misogynist, homophobic), and sample bias (mostly young men). There are other issues too e.g. using composite outcomes instead of subscales. The list goes on.
But well done on setting up your interest group. I would be very interested to hear how it is going e.g. the kind of things counselors find most useful about your grou.
I agree with many of your points, especially about using global scores and missing the nuances found when looking at subscales. Much of the research is correlational, ignores the influence of biology, ignores evolutionary psychology, has an ideological bias, and ignores the mixed findings (when looking at the subscales, and how some subscales predict positive outcomes). The reason I don't dismiss the masculinity literature to date, even with its one-sidedness, is that in my research, where I developed a positive masculinity scale, I too found mixed findings when looking at the positive dimension of masculinity. It seems that whether you look at the positive dimension, there are mixed findings with some facets of masculinity correlating with positive outcomes and other facets correlating with poor outcomes. Conversely, when looking at the maladaptive side (such as the CMNI, GRCS, MGRS), there are again mixed findings with some facets of masculinity correlating with positive outcomes and other facets correlating with poor outcomes. So, it seems to me, either perspective results in mixed findings.
Hi Dan. I would need to know how you defined masculinity and what the subscales are. Can you send me a link to your findings please?
Could you provide some links to the literature you've found that suggests the opposite point of view? I'd be interested in delving into the other side of the argument
Hi Rory. Great that you are willing to look at alternative perspectives - I wish more people did so. My textbook Perspectives in Male Psychology, sections 11.4, 11.5 and 12.3 touch on these points, as do other parts of the book. I would recommend the Centre for Male Psychology online course which expands on these issues, and the video format helps make the points clearer. If your budget is tight, you might be able get Perspectives from your library, and there are lots of free articles in Male Psychology magazine (via the CMP website).
From the literature you've presented, we can see strong negative correlation between traditional masculinity and seeking help. Could this be viewed as an overdone strength? Is there any literature studying the relationship between traditional masculinity and resilience to stress, or minor problems? My thought process is that holding a traditionally masculine persona may help men cope with minor issues, but when it comes to larger issues, continuing to hold this persona becomes less and less useful to the point of being harmful (eg, not seeing a doctor about chest pains).
I really like your comment of overdone strength. I take an Aristotelian view that a virtue in excess comes a vice, so you might be one to something. The problem is, how do you test a hypothesis like that? But from a theoretical standpoint, I like the idea and would like to work out the details of something like that in a model/theory.
The second part of your comment, I would say it's fairly complex. Some older research used to think of gender as a personality type in essence, a gendered personality. And with personality traits, the way a person behaves through the lens of that trait is quite context-dependent making it difficult to predict or quantify.