Modern WisdomWhy Nobody Seems To Care About Incels - Dr Andrew Thomas
CHAPTERS
- 0:00 – 1:13
Parliament briefing: why Andrew presented incel research to policymakers
Chris asks about Andrew’s experience speaking at the Houses of Parliament. Andrew explains the Home Office–linked funding, the scale of the study, and why primary data is needed to correct myths created by forum-scraping and theory-heavy work.
- •Research funded via an arm’s-length Home Office body and discussed with the Women & Equality Select Committee
- •Study recruitment and why it became one of the largest incel studies to date
- •Desire for policy relevance and myth-busting
- •Critique of overreliance on secondary data (forum scraping) and weak theory
- 1:13 – 4:18
A mental-health lens on incels: predicting harm and intervention leverage points
Andrew argues that if the goal is reducing harm and misogynistic ideology, mental health should be part of the toolkit. He outlines the study’s ‘harm’ construct and compares how well networking, ideology, and mental health predict harm—then describes a feedback loop between ideology and mental health.
- •How the study defined and measured ‘harm’ (beliefs, condoning violence, anti-feminism, aggression)
- •Networking vs ideology vs mental health as predictors of harm
- •Finding: ideology and mental health predict harm more strongly than networking
- •Bidirectional relationship: worse mental health ↔ deeper ideology
- •Intervention implication: mental health may be more tractable than ideology change
- 4:18 – 7:55
Why the public resists ‘helping’: punishment intuitions and the prison analogy
The conversation turns to why mental-health support for disliked groups feels controversial. Andrew uses evidence from prison studies on reoffending to illustrate that support can reduce harm even if the public finds it morally unpalatable.
- •Public fear that mental-health framing ‘excuses’ bad behavior
- •Analogy to inmate support and reoffending outcomes
- •Physical-health interventions vs mental-health interventions in prison findings
- •Moral discomfort: ‘bad people should suffer’ vs pragmatic harm reduction
- •Emphasis on reducing misogyny and human suffering regardless of moral judgments
- 7:55 – 14:31
Why nobody sympathises with incels: stereotypes, media framing, and ‘performative antagonism’
Andrew explains sympathy gaps as driven by simplistic stereotypes and sensational examples. He introduces ‘performative antagonism’—incels posting shocking content to provoke outsiders—which then gets treated as sincere by media and reinforces public fear and disgust.
- •Common stereotype: right-wing, NEET, woman-hating young men
- •How low-effort discourse overlooks nuance (e.g., misusing DV rates as ‘incel harm’)
- •Why women’s and men’s sympathy can both be low given the ‘brand’
- •Anonymous forums reduce real-life social support and accountability
- •Performative antagonism and self-sabotage cycles that invite rejection
- •Media amplification of extreme posts strengthens the stereotype
- 14:31 – 17:27
Academic backlash and methodological fights: the critique of ‘mental health & loneliness’ explanations
Chris reads from a paper critiquing mental-health approaches to incel violence. Andrew responds that the critique relies on fallacies and unfalsifiable claims, and he describes a coordinated rebuttal defending the value of multiple explanatory avenues, including mental health.
- •Summary of the critical paper’s claims (feminist/structural framing; skepticism of mental health accounts)
- •Andrew’s critique: logical fallacies, ad hominem insinuations, weak rigor
- •Argument that psychology is dismissed without engaging psychological evidence
- •Rebuttal paper assembled to address terms like ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘himpathy’
- •Concern that narrowing frameworks blocks effective interventions
- 17:27 – 21:16
Does incel violence occur? Definitional confusion and why attacks are rare
Andrew distinguishes between broad ‘violence’ (speech harms) and physical attacks. He argues physical incel-motivated attacks are rare relative to the community size, and some high-profile cases may be misattributed after legal scrutiny, while online harassment remains a separate, real harm category.
- •Why ‘violence’ definitions vary from speech to physical acts
- •Physical attacks: rare compared to organized terrorist violence
- •Post-hoc doubts about incel motivation in some cases (e.g., Minassian)
- •Incel identity vs ‘incel-adjacent’ belief holders
- •Online harms: doxxing, harassment, image manipulation—distinct from physical violence
- 21:16 – 26:07
Why there isn’t more incel violence: lack of organization, goals, and offline planning
Building on newer work, they explore why severe violence is not more common given the rhetoric. Andrew points to missing hallmarks of extremist groups: clear end goals, in-person coordination, and operational planning—plus fragmentation across platforms.
- •Reference to research asking ‘Why isn’t there more incel violence?’
- •Incels lack a clear collective end goal compared with terrorist groups
- •Limited in-person small-group planning and organizational structure
- •Fragmented ‘community’ across forums/Discord with varying cohesion
- •Questioning whether inceldom is a full ideology/movement or a looser identity
- 26:07 – 31:54
Labeling effects: rejection sensitivity, ‘cult-like’ insulation, and reverse-CBT dynamics
Andrew explains how demonizing labels can backfire by validating incels’ expectations of rejection. He describes forum dynamics that intensify cognitive rigidity (‘cope’ as reverse CBT) and social drag-back mechanisms (‘crabs in a bucket’) that keep members stuck.
- •High rejection sensitivity and perceived victimhood as community traits
- •Labeling as monsters can entrench isolation and grievance
- •‘Cult-like’ sharing of worst-case outside-world examples to justify withdrawal
- •‘Cope’ culture encourages hard, black-and-white thinking (reverse CBT)
- •‘Crabs in a bucket’: social penalties for hope or attempted exit
- •Diversity of members’ backgrounds and behaviors revealed in qualitative interviews
- 31:54 – 36:42
Ethnic, age, and political demographics: centrist-leaning overall, riskier right-wing subgroup
Chris asks about diversity inside incel spaces versus the popular ‘white supremacist, young, right-wing’ image. Andrew cites data showing substantial non-white representation, wide age ranges, and overall centrist/slightly left-leaning policy preferences—while a small violence-condoning subgroup trends strongly right-wing.
- •About a third of sampled incels are non-white/BIPOC (UK and US replications)
- •Age distribution is wider than assumed (some in 50s–90s)
- •Using Pew-style forced-choice items: overall slightly left/centrist tendencies
- •Low status/low money plausibly correlates with pro-redistribution preferences
- •Small subgroup condoning violence (~6–10%) shows consistently right-wing views
- •Violence/entitlement attitudes are not uniform across the population
- 36:42 – 39:51
Does evolutionary psychology neglect incels? Sloppy communication, ‘body count’ claims, and forum digestion
Andrew addresses claims that evolutionary psychology helped create harm by neglecting incels or inspiring violence. He argues the bigger issue is sloppy academic communication—especially about sex differences—combined with selective cherry-picking by online communities, and he rejects ‘0-to-100’ radicalization via reading papers alone.
- •Response to the ‘evopsych has a body count’ accusation
- •Acknowledgment: imprecise writing about averages and sex differences can mislead
- •Open-access/preprints allow communities to directly consume and annotate research
- •Cherry-picking evidence by blackpill communities vs balanced interpretation
- •Argument: research may be used as post-hoc justification by already-violent individuals
- •Importance of scholars correcting public misreadings and communicating carefully
- 39:51 – 43:18
Trust, funding drama, and research ethics: ‘shadowy task force’ accusations and paying participants
Andrew responds to conspiratorial claims about being paid by anti-extremism bodies. He explains arm’s-length funding safeguards, data access restrictions, and why paying incel participants was an ethical choice that drew criticism from both outsiders and incels themselves.
- •How reputational accusations shift burden of proof onto researchers
- •Explanation of the Centre for Countering Extremism’s arm’s-length status
- •Contractual safeguards: funder has no influence; no access to raw data
- •Ethical rationale for paying incel participants like other study subjects
- •Backlash from both ‘don’t pay them’ critics and incels fearing data misuse
- •Positioning: describe findings accurately to reduce harm (no overselling/underselling)
- 43:18 – 47:06
Current state of incel research: from description to intervention and identifying pathways to harm
Andrew argues the field is still stuck in descriptive work and forum scraping and needs targeted intervention research. He describes new cluster findings suggesting two distinct pathways toward harm—one tied to autism traits/bullying/low mate value and another tied to dark triad traits/right-wing beliefs—implying different agencies and treatments are needed.
- •Field trend: lots of theory and scraping; limited direct data from incels
- •Next step: categorize subgroups and design interventions
- •Preprint cluster model: (1) high autism traits + bullying + low mate value; (2) dark triad + right-wing beliefs
- •Both pathways feed ideology but appear relatively separate
- •Practical consequence: NHS vs Prevent disagreement reflects different clusters
- •Analogy: don’t generalize ‘football hooligans’ to all ‘football fans’
- 47:06 – 54:20
Is misogyny rising outside incels? Zooming out to the broader ‘online misogynistic ideology’ ecosystem
They broaden from incels to the wider manosphere/red-pill ecosystem. Andrew suggests the bigger risk for misogyny spread may come from groups that translate beliefs into action (PUA, MGTOW) rather than incels’ learned helplessness, and proposes studying ‘OMI’ as a broader category.
- •Incels as one node within a larger red-pill/manosphere network
- •Incels often translate red-pill beliefs into inaction/withdrawal
- •Other communities use beliefs to ‘do something’ (opt out, game the system)
- •Concern that focusing on ‘incel’ misses wider online misogyny diffusion
- •Proposal: study ‘online misogynistic ideology (OMI)’ across groups
- 54:20 – 1:07:17
Men’s experiences with female therapists: quality variance, perceived bias, and ideology in the therapy room
Andrew discusses variability in therapy quality and the UK’s unregulated ‘counselor’ role. He relays common male-client complaints—especially in couples therapy—and warns that ideological framing (e.g., ‘toxic masculinity’ as diagnosis) can invalidate men and deter help-seeking, despite evidence that therapist demographics shouldn’t matter when therapy is competent and empathic.
- •UK counseling is partially unregulated; large variance in competence
- •Advice: a bad therapist isn’t proof therapy doesn’t work—try another
- •Perceived ‘siding with the woman’ in couples therapy as a recurring complaint
- •Reported lack of empathy about men’s mating/relationship struggles
- •Problem: importing political ideology into therapy (toxic masculinity/feminism prescriptions)
- •Research note: therapist traits often matter less than the therapeutic alliance—perception still affects engagement
- 1:07:17 – 1:16:48
Population density, income, and family size: the ‘Musk Effect’ and city design implications
Andrew presents large-scale dating-profile research linking income and population density to number of children. He argues dense environments may signal resource scarcity and encourage smaller families, but higher income can offset that effect, raising possible policy and urban-design implications for fertility decline.
- •Dataset: ~4 million dating profiles across countries/states
- •Main effects: higher income predicts more children; higher density predicts fewer children
- •Interaction: in high-density areas, high income counteracts density’s suppressive effect
- •Evolutionary interpretation: density cues resource tightness → fewer ‘eggs in one basket’
- •Policy speculation: redesign cities to feel less cramped (space, layout, green areas) vs only relocating people
- 1:16:48 – 1:25:49
New research nuances on body counts: timing and trajectory matter across cultures
Andrew explains new multi-country work showing consistent long-term mate preferences: fewer past partners tends to be rated more desirable, but crucially the timing pattern matters. People judge high counts less harshly if partners were concentrated earlier and slowed later, and the expected ‘sexual double standard’ appears more societal myth than personal preference.
- •Study design: visualized sexual-history ‘trajectories’ (when partners occurred)
- •Cross-cultural result: 4 partners rated > 12 > 36 in long-term context across all sampled countries
- •Trajectory interaction: high counts judged most negatively when recent frequency increases
- •More forgiveness when higher counts are in the distant past near sexual debut
- •Minimal sex differences in long-term appraisal—contrary to common double-standard claims
- •Distinction: people predict society is harsher than what they personally endorse
- 1:25:49 – 1:26:26
Wrap-up: where to follow Andrew’s work and therapy practice
Chris closes by asking where listeners can find Andrew’s writing and clinical work. Andrew shares his social handle and website for therapeutic contact.
- •Twitter/X: @DrThomasAG
- •Website: andrewthomas.org for therapy details and contact
- •Closing remarks and sign-off
