Eh. Males on their own don't tend to exhibit that behavior. It's less ignorance and more ape like competitiveness. When you put them together the testosterone compounds and leads to machismo, which results in a bunch of dumb shit.
This argument is saturated in assumptions and is difficult to swallow.
The idea of lack of close physical contact promoting bad behaviour is a well studied phenomenon in many areas, including road rage, and online discourse.
After a quick read of the article, it's not measuring how matcho they are, but how competitive they are. Even that is by proxy. Men who have lived with more men will tend towards a game of skill for a larger payout, over a fixed payout.
I personally consider the risk management of being competitive to be an extremely important life skill. Knowing your capabilities requires practise and comparison. Men also tend to change their behaviour patterns when a women is present, particularlyyounger men. "Machoism" is often just our tribal bonding instincts kicking in. It let's young men learn the limits of their own capabilities and the capabilities and temperament of these they are working closely with.
Testosterone spikes inhibit risk assessment. Testosterone spikes based on social circumstance rather than the time of day. When there are smaller males/females around you can dominate, testosterone spikes. When the other males are bigger, stronger and more aggressive, testosterone doesn't spike. Making you avoid conflict instead.
A lack of risk assessment, along with increased impulsivity, is a feature. Useful to get males to initiate fighting.
Testosterone has complex effects. It is also one of the few hormones that significantly changes in the male brain. Learning to both control and utilise its effects is critical to the proper development of a man.
Testosterone changes your risk assessments, rather than jamming them. Uncontrolled, it can be problematic. It takes practice and training to channel that in productive directions. Without that practice, it's effects are either bottled up (with a tendency to explode) or lead to fighting, or crude domineering. Neither is healthy.
I wasn't reading and critiquing the underlying paper, I was primarily checking if the headline and methods matched up. They don't. Confidence and controlled risk taking are very different from "macho".
They also seem to make the correlation ≠ causation fallacy, though that might be fixed in the actual paper. Is it living in a mixed house makes men less confident, or are less confident men more likely to end up in a mixed house?
I'm definitely no more than a reasonably informed layman in sociology. I do have scientific training, however, so can spot the more glaring signs of a journalist going beyond what a paper says, or the data backs up.
What's the difference? Genuine question. I frequently see standard male behavior touted as "toxic masculinity" on this platform, so I'm not really sure what you consider manly, but not macho.
Yes it is. As much as being kind, protective, supportive, abusive, cruel and every other behaviour is. Words and ideas do not define what acting like a man is. Men acting the way they do does. Which is countless of ways.
I didn't say macho, and you added toxic. Men and women behave differently. It's natural. We have different chemicals pumping through our systems and driving our decisions. But men who spend more time with women behave more like women. There's a study right here talking about it.
Yes, despite the fact that the existence of those rules is heavily contested in modern society. But I wasn't talking about social expectations, I'm talking about the effects of hormonal balances which are scientifically proven.
There are over 200 years of records and observation.
We can make models of how the average man or woman tends to behave in a given region.
For example. We know that men are a lot more likely to study to become mechanics than women. That's not a rule that women can't. But it's a statistic that they often don't