A couple weeks ago, a study bubbled up through the muck of the The Red Pill subreddit: “Physically Weak Men More Likely to be Socialists (Unless They’re Poor),” the Redditor posted, next to a tag that says “Science” and, for good measure, a picture of an atom.
“Lifting doesn’t just make you stronger and fitter, it also makes you less of a cuck,” the Redditor proclaimed, using a term coined by the men’s rights movement to signify a spineless beta male.
The study was also fodder for right-wing bloggers, some of whom wrote it up with the natural corollary: “strong men more likely to be capitalist.”
Sure, if you’re a free-market enthusiast, it may be satisfying to think of men who tweet “Bernie would have won” as wimpy weaklings. But is it true?
For the study, which was recently published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior, researchers recruited 171 men and measured their shoulders, chest, and flexed biceps. The men were asked to squeeze a dynamometer to measure their grip strength.
The researchers also gauged how much the men valued redistributive economic policies, based on how much they agreed with statements like “High incomes should be taxed more than is currently the case.” They then measured how much the men had a “social dominance orientation,” or a preference for hierarchies—those who thought things like “Inferior groups should stay in their place” rank highly on this scale.