Meat, stress and risk-taking: what 38 experiments reveal about masculinity threat

By Tarun Sai LomteReviewed by Susha Cheriyedath, M.Sc.Aug 14 2026

A review of 38 experiments finds that threats to masculinity can trigger compensatory behaviors, but the strongest evidence centers on food choices rather than health risks across the board.

Review: Easy to Lose and Risky to Regain? A Scoping Review of Experimentally Manipulated Masculinity Threat and Men’s Health. Image Credit: AJR_photo / Shutterstock

In a recent review article published in the American Journal of Men’s Health, researchers at the University of British Columbia summarized experimental evidence on how masculinity threat affects men’s health-related behaviors, attitudes, and physiological responses.

Health outcomes for males are worse than for females. Males have a shorter life expectancy, higher prevalence of bladder cancer and coronary heart disease, and a greater risk of alcohol-related and cardiovascular death compared to females. Moreover, males show more health-risk attitudes and behaviors, such as binge drinking, smoking, and a preference for red meat and processed foods.

Emerging studies on the causal pathways through which masculinity influences male health behaviors highlight threat to masculinity as a mechanism that leads males to conform to societal expectations of masculinity. Threats to masculinity can prompt compensatory behaviors that reestablish masculine identity while potentially increasing health risk. However, experimental approaches vary in what aspect of masculinity is threatened and may not produce identical psychological responses.

The study and findings

In this scoping review, researchers mapped experimental evidence on the health-related effects of masculinity threat. First, a literature search was conducted in the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycNet, Embase, Medline, Web of Science, and Scopus databases for studies that experimentally manipulated masculinity threat and measured health-related attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes among males.

Titles/abstracts were screened for eligibility, followed by full-text analysis. The reference lists of the included studies were also reviewed for additional relevant articles. The team extracted data on study characteristics, methodology, and findings. The Cochrane Risk of Bias tool was used to evaluate the risk of bias. The team identified 256 records through database searches and 28 additional records from citation searching and other sources.

After deduplication, 178 records underwent title/abstract screening; full texts of 33 records were analyzed, resulting in the inclusion of 25 studies. These studies, conducted in eight countries, included 38 experiments, 26 of which were from the United States. Nine experiments were judged to have a low risk of bias, whereas 29 were deemed to have some concerns, most commonly due to a lack of preregistration, analysis plans, or manipulation checks. Sample sizes ranged between 40 and 784 subjects per experiment.

All samples except nine exclusively included adult males. Of the 11 experiments that reported sexual orientation, 10 included predominantly heterosexual samples, and one comprised participants of mixed orientation. Ethnicity was not reported in 12 experiments, while seven had predominantly White populations. Most experiments were conducted in Western populations. The researchers examined masculinity threat across a wide range of health-related outcomes. Food and beverage consumption was the most extensively studied outcome.

Masculinity threat effects ranged from behavioral changes and behavioral proxies to shifts in cognition, physiology, and intentions. The magnitude of these effects was substantially heterogeneous across health domains. Dietary outcomes were investigated in 16 experiments across nine studies, with eight assessing behavioral outcomes (e.g., meat intake and food/beverage choices) and the remaining evaluating health intentions and cognition (e.g., attitudes toward vegetarianism and meat intake).

Masculinity threats skewed males more strongly towards stereotypically masculine food choices, e.g., increased meat intake, rejection of vegetarian foods, and emotional attachment to meat. Individual studies also found that men exposed to masculinity threat consumed more alcohol and energy drinks. However, two studies found no clear effects: one observed no differences in intentions to consume meat between threatened and non-threatened males, and the other found no changes in meat-related justification.

Further, nine experiments examined physiological stress and emotional well-being. One study showed that men in the threat condition had increased levels of anger, shame, and guilt and decreased levels of empathy. Physiological stress responses, such as increased cortisol reactivity and reduced vagal withdrawal, were observed in participants experiencing masculinity threat. Six experiments evaluated fitness and body image outcomes, yielding mixed results overall.

For instance, one study reported that men exposed to threat rated their muscularity and strength lower than controls, whereas another found that those in the threat condition reported greater push-up capacity. Risk-taking behaviors were examined in five experiments. One study found that males under masculinity threat were more inclined to forgo the use of condoms in riskier scenarios compared to non-threatened males.

Another study reported that men in the threat condition had greater tolerance to upper arm cuff pain than non-threatened males. Only one paper, comprising two experiments, investigated interpersonal relationships and found that threatened males reported less closeness and commitment to their romantic partners. Precarious manhood beliefs and self-ascribed masculine traits moderated responses, shaping when, for whom, and in what direction masculinity threats influenced behavior.

Conclusions

Collectively, males under masculinity threat can exhibit compensatory behaviors to reaffirm their masculinity, although responses are not uniform across individuals or health domains. Precarious manhood beliefs and self-ascribed masculine traits moderated the effects of masculinity threat. The findings suggest that masculinity threats have their clearest causal influence on male health behaviors in the domain of meat preference, with limited or mixed evidence across other domains.

The authors cautioned that most evidence came from US and other Western populations, most experiments had some risk-of-bias concerns, and some outcomes classified as behaviors were laboratory proxies rather than consequential real-world actions. Publication bias may also have led to an overestimation of the consistency of findings.

Overall, these results may inform public health messaging by indicating that, under some circumstances, challenges to masculine status could lead to health-risk behaviors in males.