Incel: Internetið, kvenhatur og samsæriskenningar // Incels: Internet, Misogyny and Conspiracy

Hinni svokölluðu Incel hreyfingu hefur vaxið ásmegin meðal ungra karla í vissum kreðsum internetsins. Incel hreyfingin byggir á nýrri gerð kvenhaturs sem samtvinnast samsæriskenningum og ofbeldisfullum skoðunum í garð kvenna. Í fyrirlestrinum er farið yfir nýlega rannsókn sem kannaði sálfræðilegar rætur Incel-skoðana og reifað hvað sé hægt að gera til að sporna við útbreiðslu þeirra.

Hægt er að panta táknmálstúlkun á viðburði Jafnréttisdaga með tölvupósti á adstodarmenn@hi.is.

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Lengri lýsing á rannsókninni á ensku: Incels form an extremist internet movement of young men that embrace extreme sexism, motivated by the perceived threat of women, intertwined with a lack of sexual success. This indicates a new sort of sexist ideology against women, forming the basis for a number of terror attacks. Concurrently, little research has been conducted to gain insights into which psychological factors are associated with incel beliefs. We ran a correlational study (N = 400 UK Prolific workers) to identify predictors of psychological variables associated with a myriad of incel beliefs. Based on the available literature, we operationalised incel beliefs as misogyny, masculinity threat, revenge fantasies, violent fantasies, machismo, and status threat. Conspiracy suspicions about feminism emerged as the most prominent predictor of incel beliefs, along with realistic threat (i.e., to one’s material and physical wellbeing), competitive victimhood, male narcissism, and interestingly, low self-esteem. What seems to distinguish incel beliefs from more traditional notions of sexism is how interwoven they are with conspiracy ideations about feminism and their dissimination on the internet via memes and posts on popular chatboards such as Reddit. Our results can be used to design interventions aimed to prevent radicalisation of young men that spend a lot of their time online and are at risk of being exposed to incel radicalisation.