Graduation Year

2024

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Degree Granting Department

Psychology

Major Professor

Jennifer K. Bosson, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Randy Borum, PsyD.

Committee Member

Chad Dube, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jamie Goldenberg, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Joe Vandello, Ph.D.

Keywords

Identity Fusion, Significance Quest, Self-Views, Self-Verification, Endorsement of Violence

Abstract

Incels (short for “involuntary celibates) are an online community of men who blame women for their reputed sexual and romantic failures. The misogyny of their worldview, called the blackpill, has inspired multiple instances of real-world violence against women. Alarmingly, we know little about the temporal processes whereby an incel goes from joining an online community to becoming deeply aligned (i.e., “fused”) with the group. This project sought to address this by scraping incels’ most popular web forum and using text analysis to identify psychological mechanisms that could be responsible for incels’ fusion. The resulting dataset consisted of 1,097,841 unique discussion posts by 4,711 unique users across 144,468 discussion threads. Residual dynamic structural equation modeling indicated that there was no association between significance quest (i.e., seeking meaning), verification of self-views, and later identity fusion. How identity fusion unfolds in online spaces still remains an enigma.

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