What Do We Know About Incels?

People are single for many reasons. For some, it’s a choice—they might be “finding themselves,” prefer casual sex over commitment, or be waiting until the right person comes along. For others, singlehood feels like a choice society has made for them, whether they like it or not.

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Involuntary celibates, or “incels,” are a sub-culture of men who feel totally excluded from the mating market. Often holding extreme views about how dating works (inspired by a caricature of evolutionary psychology), incels have developed a reputation as sexist, trolling, and dangerous. Concerns that incels pose a danger to society have been reinforced by mass shootings committed by young men with supposed (and sometimes later debunked) links to the community.

As a psychologist, I have observed the incel community from a distance for some time. I have seen extreme views about women, other men, and dating in general which shocked and troubled me. I also saw hopelessness, despair, bravado, and variety.

While I’m far from an incel sympathizer, I drew two perhaps controversial conclusions. First, among the suffering caused by this sub-culture, the majority was directed inwards. Second, many incel stereotypes, such as being primarily white, right-wing men, didn’t quite fit.

Recently, working with William Costello and others, we’ve started to try to better understand the makeup of the incel community and how being part of this subculture might affect their mental health. In this article, I share with you some of the results of our latest study (a free version is available here) where we compared the demographics and well-being outcomes of 151 self-identified incel men to 378 non-incel men.

1. Incels have worse self-reported mental health.

We looked at depression, anxiety, loneliness, and satisfaction with life measures and found that incels scored significantly lower on these by a great deal. These differences were larger than most group differences within psychology (Cohen’s d = 0.62-0.97). The results support the idea that incels are a group plagued by poor mental health, though whether this precedes and/or is exacerbated by their self-identification and affiliation is still unknown.

2. Incels have a victim mentality.

Compared to non-incel men, incels were more likely to see themselves as victims when completing measures of Interpersonal Victimhood. They were more likely to feel that others took advantage of them and didn’t empathize with them.

Importantly, they showed a tendency to ruminate on this sense of injustice and feel the drive to have it recognized. This tendency for interpersonal victimhood likely feeds into incels' poor mental health. Psychotherapists who practice transactional analysis have long been aware of the feelings of hopelessness and bitterness that can accompany a victim mindset and will often try to help clients adopt different roles.

3. Incels have a higher desire for casual sex.

This finding shines a light on a potential explanation for incels' frustration.

In general, there are well-established, large sex differences in the desire for casual sex. While you can find variation in both men and women, women tend to show less interest in casual sex as a group. And because casual sex is riskier for women (in terms of pregnancy, STD driven infertility etc.) the bar tends to be set higher for their casual sex partners.

Put these facts together, and we have a group of men who want to compete in one of the toughest mating markets—a recipe for frustration.

4. Incels tend to be young, NEET, and live at home.

Incels tended to be a few years younger than non-incels and were almost twice as likely to still be living with their parents, and not be in education, employment, or further training (known by the acronym NEET). This is important because we know that education, employment, and independence are key ways people build status and become more competitive in the mating market, particularly men. It also suggests that this group of young men might be harder to reach out to offer mental health support.

5. Incels show ethnic and political variety.

We had a convenience sample, so it’s hard to claim that it's fully representative, but one of the things which surprised us was the amount of ethnic and political variety found among incels. More than a third of our incel sample defined themselves as BIPOC (compared to a quarter of non-incel men) and there were no differences in political affiliation between the groups. Most were left-leaning (44 percent) followed by right-leaning (38 percent) and then those somewhere in between (17 percent). This suggests that some of the stereotypes about the makeup of incels are inaccurate.

So, Who Are Incels?

According to our research, which represents one of the largest surveys of self-identified incels to date, these young men come from varied ethnic and political backgrounds but share a tendency to have low status, victimhood, a drive for casual sex, and poor mental health. The findings paint a picture of hopeless young men frustrated with their lack of mating prospects which manifests itself in extreme views, bravado, and the seeking of affiliation with others who feel the same way.

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Some may find the views perpetuated by incels so abhorrent that they deserve no help or support. But for those who can see past the bravado and are passionate about men's mental health, this research could provide the first step in understanding how to relieve the psychological suffering of incels, and perhaps reduce their extreme views in the process.