Incels Uncovered: How Potent Is the Black Pill?

Over the last few years, I’ve been doing a lot of research into the incel community. For those not in the know, incel stands for involuntary celibate. At a basic level, it refers to one’s sexual status — “I’m sexless and I don’t want to be.” But it’s also a label adopted by a growing community of single men who build an identity around their lack of mating opportunities — a community that’s marked by hopelessness, extreme views, and hostile attitudes towards women.

There are many misconceptions about the community, and one of my goals has been to try to answer some basic questions about who incels are and what they believe, and to sort out fact from fiction using unbiased empirical research. I’ve previously written about some of the things we’ve learned about incels, my views on how their perspectives are formed and maintained, and the underlying issue of dysphoric singlehood that goes beyond just this group.

This month, I’m able to share some exciting new findings. We have just published the largest study on incels to date, with 561 participants in total, predominantly recruited from incel communities. This has enabled us to take a closer look at their mental health, ideology, and networking to see what predicts their harmful attitudes and beliefs. Here are some of the findings that captured my interest.

Incel mental health

Using clinical diagnostic tools, we found that around 40% of incels had moderate-to-severe levels of depression, and a similar percentage had moderate-to-severe levels of anxiety. For context, presenting with these levels of symptoms would usually lead to an offer of psychopharmaceutical intervention from a primary healthcare provider (e.g. a GP). Worryingly, around 1 in 5 incels had suicidal thoughts daily. Together, these findings echo our previous research on incel mental health in a smaller sample and provide more evidence that incels may be at risk of self-harm.

Incels are more diverse than you think

We found that a large proportion (42%) of incels were ethnic minorities, their ages ranged from 18-73, and most (82%) were working or in education. Using a political orientation measure, we were also able to find that as a collective incels sat slightly left of centre for most issues — ranging from the environment to immigration. The sample was also neurodiverse, with 30% scoring high enough on a measure of ASD to warrant referral for a diagnosis. Thus, the stereotype of incels as young, white, right-wing, and unemployed doesn’t seem to fit the data.

Ideology is (somewhat) consistent

When we asked incels about some of the common beliefs put forward on incel forums (that most women desire only a small minority of highly successful men, for example) we found around two-thirds personally agreed with them. A similar proportion of participants agreed that incel ideology exists, showing that there is some wiggle room — there is no hymn sheet from which all incels sing. One thing was clear, though: Incels generally saw feminists as their main "enemy," rating them as 4.35 on average on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very much so).

Incels communicate almost exclusively online and rarely one-to-one

In the first study to look at how incels network, we asked them what platforms they used to interact with one another, how often they used them, and in what capacity (e.g. content creation vs. lurking). Incels generally stuck to one or two methods of networking, and these were predominantly using anonymous or pseudonymous social media and forums. There were a very small number who regularly met in person or communicated one-to-one with others via phone or video calls. These figures will be reassuring for those who worry that incels represent a wider, physical threat to society. While there have been a small number of high-profile incel-linked acts of violence, this style of anonymous, disorganised communication isn’t reminiscent of the kind used by groups who seek to do collective harm to others — such as coordinated acts of terrorism.

The phenomenon cuts across cultural boundaries

Ours was the first study to recruit large enough sub-samples from incels of different countries to allow for cross-cultural comparisons. Comparing US and UK incels, we found, well, very little. There were some differences — UK incels were slightly less ethically diverse and slightly better educated, for example. However, these were small by statistical standards. It seems to be the case that incels on both sides of the Atlantic share similar backgrounds, mental health challenges, beliefs, and support networks.

The biggest contributors to incel harm

Some of the most important insights gathered from the study were potential pathways to reduce incel harmful beliefs and attitudes — such as hostile sexism and justification of violence. Using the range of variables in our study, we were able to look at the unique contributions of mental health, ideology, and networking to the risk of harm.

Singlehood Essential Reads

What's Behind the Record-Setting Rise of Single Living

Why Singles Can Be Just as Happy as Partnered People

Pause for a moment. If you had to guess the strongest predictor of incel harm — mental health, ideology, or networking — which would you pick? If you guessed networking, you would have something in common with 45% of my followers on X. However, statistical modelling paints a different picture. We found that the influence of mental health and ideology on harmful attitudes and beliefs was two-and-a-half times stronger than networking. We also found that mental health and ideology shared a potential bidirectional relationship, with poor mental health causing greater buy-in to ideology and vice versa.

Together, our report suggests that mental health support and tackling ideology might have a greater impact on reducing harmful attitudes and beliefs than trying to disrupt networking. If we want to get serious about reducing incel harm, we need to recognise that one of the greatest risks incels pose is to themselves and take a proactive approach to develop interventions aimed at improving the mental health of this diverse group of men.