Rape-Supportive Attitudes, Loneliness and Sexual Aggression Among Involuntary Celibates

Involuntary celibates (incels) are an online community of men drawing increasing scientific attention. There has been some empirical demonstration of their misogynistic views, and emerging theorization observing parallels between their situation and grievance-fueled sexual violence. The present study therefore firstly aimed to examine whether indeed inceldom is linked to both loneliness (as a hypothesized characteristic of inceldom as well as a frequent antecedent to sexual offending) and rape-supportive attitudes, and secondly, to see whether inceldom, loneliness and rape-supportive cognitions are related to behavioral outcomes of sexual aggression. A survey of adult men seeking romantic relationships (N = 814), some of whom (61.5%) identifying as incels, was conducted online. Regression analyses showed that regardless of incel self-identification the endorsement of incel ideas, rape-supportive cognitions and loneliness were related to self-disclosed previous sexual aggression. Loneliness and some, but not all, rape-supportive cognitions were also associated with inclination toward committing future sexual aggression. However, endorsement of incel ideas was not related to inclination toward future sexual aggression. These findings suggest that further research is needed to better understand the relationship between inceldom and sexual violence and the implications that this would have for primary, secondary and tertiary interventions.