"Act Like a Real Man!" A Novel Examination of How Socializing Others to Masculine Honor-Based Norms Bolsters Men's Reputations

Masculine honor beliefs describe an ideology whereby people have the expectation that men should be protectors of their family and partner. Previous research has shown that men who adhere to these expectations have their social reputations bolstered while men who do not adhere have their social reputations diminished. We examined how United States-based English-speaking participants (n = 247; 114 men, 126 women, 2 gender nonbinary, 5 did not report) would perceive a man who was confronted (or not) by a bystander for behaving in honor-consistent versus honor-inconsistent ways. We predicted (although our findings did not support) that participants' own perceptions of the man as honorable would be exacerbated when the man was confronted. Instead, consistent with previous research, participants' perceptions of the man were bolstered when he behaved in honor-consistent and diminished when he behaved in honor-inconsistent ways, but this was not affected by how a bystander responded (confronting him or not). Most notably, we also examined how participants perceived the bystander and showed that if a bystander fails to enforce and socialize traditional honor expectations (i.e., confronting a man behaving in honor-inconsistent ways), his own honor can be minimized similarly to if he, himself, had failed to act in honor-consistent ways. Public Significance Statement Masculine honor beliefs describe expectations for men's behavior in society as well as how people should respond when men do not adhere to these expectations. People who do not reinforce these behaviors are perceived more negatively by people who hold masculine honor beliefs. These expectations have important implications for understanding men's aggression in society.