Why isn't there more incel violence? (2023)

What the study found

A 2023 paper in Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, co-authored with David Buss, argues that although incel communities host a great deal of misogynistic rhetoric, the actual amount of violence carried out by incels is statistically rare. The authors also frame incel distress partly through the lens of an evolutionary mismatch between ancestral and modern mating environments. ^[1]

Why it matters here

Public discussion of the manosphere often treats incel communities as a direct pipeline to mass violence. This paper is cited on the site to add a quantitative counterpoint: the misogynistic rhetoric is real and well documented, but violent acts remain uncommon relative to the size of these online communities. It appears in the work of William Costello and David Buss, who apply an evolutionary-psychology framing to incel distress rather than reading it purely as ideology. That framing is contested, but it shapes how the evidence base on incels is presented here.