2023 — The mating psychology of incels: misfortunes, misperceptions, and misrepresentations

What the study found

A 2023 review in The Journal of Sex Research by Costello, Rolon, Thomas and Schmitt examines how incel communities interpret the evolutionary research on human mating. The authors argue that these communities misperceive and misrepresent that research, and that the "blackpill" worldview in particular treats physical attractiveness and mating outcomes as fixed and hopeless rather than as something that can change. ^[1]

Why it matters here

Public debate about the manosphere often takes incel self-descriptions at face value, including the fatalistic "blackpill" premise that attraction is genetically determined and unalterable. This paper is cited on the site to show that the evolutionary-psychology literature incels invoke does not actually support that reading. That distinction bears on how the community is characterised, and it informs the broader question of whether most red-pill followers are dangerous by reframing incel beliefs as a misreading of the science rather than a settled scientific conclusion.