A few years ago, I was hired to revise a psychology textbook to make it more appealing to Gen Z. I’m a Millennial, but my brother is a Gen Z (“digital native” born between 1997 and 2012), and our perceptions of American life are sometimes very different.
To help with revision, I have read the following iGen Written by psychologist Jean Twenge. The book’s central hypothesis is that Gen Z, more than any previous American generation, has a unique and keen interest in tolerance, diversity, and social justice.
However, as with any generation, there are outliers. And these outliers surprise us and tell us what makes generational subgroups tick.
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As a social psychologist who studies the interaction between social structure and individual psychology, I have seen this relationship come into sharp focus during this presidential election. I closely monitor exit polls and identify psychological “surprises” in policy trends, i.e., when behavioral expectations for individuals and groups (based on psychology, history, and socio-demographic orientation) diverge from actual developments. I’ve been paying attention to the places. What I’ve seen with Gen Z’s voting trends is something politicians need to pay attention to as the next generation reaches voting age. Young white men’s votes skew toward conservatives in part because of how society defines and sets expectations about masculinity.
Gen Z should have voted blue as a bloc. After all, the Democratic Party claims to be the party of progress, especially when compared to the current Republican Party, and Twenge said Gen Z is “safety-obsessed, tolerance-oriented, and inequality-obsessed.” “I have no patience for it,” he said. Kamala Harris focused on important progressive issues like redressing women’s abortion rights, while Donald Trump’s campaign criticized sexist comments and threatened to roll back protections for transgender students in schools. It was full of promises. And while Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz has been praised as a progressive advocate, President Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, has regressive and degrading views on the place of women in American society. was supporting. Overall, if it’s true that Gen Z is defined by progressive views on sociopolitical issues, then they should have overwhelmingly voted for the Democratic ticket. The Harris-Waltz camp certainly expected that.
And they did, in a sense. Fifty-four percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 voted for Harris and Walz. This is nothing new. Young people lean towards blue. But if what Twenge and others say is true, and this group has a unique interest in social justice, this number should be much higher. I was confident that Gen Z, regardless of gender, education, or geographic location, would overwhelmingly vote for Harris. But they didn’t. Despite nearly all historically marginalized groups moving leftward, especially LGBTQ+ youth, the Democratic Party has lost significant ground with young voters.
So who didn’t vote as expected? Young Gen Z white men (mostly those without a college degree) voted overwhelmingly. Mr. Trump (67%) bears an eerie resemblance to millennials from a while ago (also 67%). By comparison, young white working-class Gen Z women were more likely to vote Blue (43%) than slightly older Millennials (34%).
As a researcher who studies youth identity, behavior, and aggression, these patterns are alarming to me.
But the answer isn’t as simple as “toxic masculinity.” What really drove white, working-class Gen Z men to align with Trump, a candidate characterized by anger, aggression, hatred, supremacy, and a certain kind of masculinity? Based on decades of research, including my own, the answer relates to three core concepts in social psychology: conformity, motivation, and threat.
Conformity is a fundamental principle of human experience. Everyone follows norms almost every moment of every day, whether we realize it or not. We dress appropriately for work, suppress any opinions that might disrupt group harmony, and (if possible) stand to the right on escalators for passersby. When it comes to gender, the majority of us conform to the norms associated with our gender group, especially men and boys., They are more often punished than women and girls for violating gender norms.
The disproportionate pressure men and boys experience to be stereotypically masculine brings me to the central role of motivation in male anger and aggression. In self-determination theory, pressure is the opposite of autonomy. People need to feel like they have agency over their actions, which is why motivation through pressure can lead to many negative outcomes. For example, when learning is framed as inherently fun, we tend to engage more deeply than when we are under pressure (e.g., to get a good grade).
People’s motivations for gender conformity can be pressure-driven or autonomous. My research colleagues and I have shown that young men who are pressured by the expectations of others show the highest levels of aggressive and anger-like reactions when they feel the need to assert their masculinity. I discovered it. We attribute this to the fact that, compared to older men, younger men are in the midst of exploring their masculine identity and are under increased pressure in their relationships, careers, and families. I did. This is why masculinity can be especially “fragile” at this stage of life.
Our findings are consistent with the voting behavior of Gen Z working-class men in recent presidential elections. These young people are under constant pressure in an increasingly uncertain America. On the other hand, young people in rural, conservative areas experience pressure from past generations to be economically competent so they can find and support a nuclear family. On the other hand, they experience new pressures and sources of uncertainty (i.e. threats). As the middle class continues to shrink, Gen Z men (including Black and Latino men) voted for Trump in response to an economy that excluded them, and 1 in 5 young men are now unemployed. are. President Trump also fanned the flames of xenophobia by encouraging his base to blame immigrants for economic hardship, even when those accusations were completely unfounded. In a culture that equates “being a man” with” As someone who has been financially successful, raised a family, and achieved the American Dream, the election results are no surprise to me now. Young working-class men’s anger over the election was a direct and very human response to sustained pressure, perceived threats, and general fear for themselves and their families.
At the heart of all this, I believe, is the outdated misconception that men must be the powerful, income-earning guardians of their families and wider society. This concept is called hegemonic masculinity, And endorsement of this belief set was the strongest predictor of support for Trump in 2016 and 2020, even stronger than voters’ party affiliation, gender, race, and education. in recent researchWe tested when and why 10- to 14-year-old boys in the United States begin to exhibit the same patterns that lead to aggression among young adult men. We found that the combination of masculinity threat and pressure predicts boys’ aggressive responses, that is, how aggressive they feel and think, in mid-late adolescence, but not earlier. I discovered it. This will help you understand when male vulnerability arises (knowing that it subsides later in life). Data were also collected from the boys’ parents. We found that masculinity pressure was particularly high among boys whose parents endorsed hegemonic masculinity. Second, we found that these parents were particularly likely to be working class and live in more conservative counties in the United States.
In other words, we identified some of the parents who put the most pressure on their sons to be strong and protectors of the family. That pressure, in turn, predicted how aggressive boys would become to protect their masculinity. Our findings suggest that if things continue as usual, a combination of pressures to meet outdated gender expectations and real socio-economic threats in American society, working-class Alpha Generation suggests that no one should be surprised that men vote in the same way as Gen Z, Millennials, and older adults. .
Short-term solutions are difficult. In past research, I have proposed solutions to men’s compensatory anger and aggression at both the individual and societal levels. For example, it is important that adults such as parents, clinicians, and teachers resist the urge to put undue pressure on boys and that they equip boys with the tools necessary to resist such pressure. I believe that it is. At a broader level, it is important that we promote gender diversity in leadership and positions of power, and that boys learn that people of all genders, not just men, share a responsibility to provide and protect. If we could target the mechanisms underlying the pressures boys and men experience, we could reduce the anger and aggression they display to prove their masculinity.
Furthermore, in the short term, we need to consider perspectives different from our own. The anger of young working-class men in this election cycle was a direct and human response to fundamental psychological pressure and threat processes. Until the Democratic Party at least Start considering these perspectives (rather than ignoring or avoiding them), the unique pressures and perceived threats that working-class Americans face, and there will be many more “surprises” like this in the future. We need to be prepared for this.
This is an opinion and analysis article and the views expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the author. scientific american.
