Men are made, not born” (Vandello et al., 2008, p. 1325). This notion forms the basis of precarious manhood beliefs (PMB; Vandello et al., 2008): the idea that manhood is achieved through actions and can be withheld or lost through social disgrace or non-concordance with traditional gender norms. Currently, there is little known about the predictors of PMB. Religiosity may be linked to PMB. Religiosity is the degree to which a person is involved with their religion. In the current study, we differentiate between religiosity and religious affiliation. Therefore, we not only looked at someone’s individual religiosity, but also at what religion they affiliated with, to see whether differing religious doctrines had different effects on the relation between religiosity and precarious manhood. Furthermore, we looked into the differences between genders.

In the current study, we used the cross-national "Towards Gender Harmony" data set (TGH; Kosakowska-Berezecka et al., 2024). Multilevel modelling was used to assess the relations between religiosity and precarious manhood beliefs (PMB).

We found that religiosity positively predicts PMB, meaning that higher religiosity relates to more PMB. Some religious affiliations predicted PMB (some positive, some negative), but there was no interaction with religiosity. No gender differences were found. 

These findings show that PMB was higher amongst more religious people, but the effect was not large.