Corresponding Behavior Questions

Abstract

The Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale (MMIS) – Corresponding Behavior Questions, developed by Brian D. Doss and J. Roy Hopkins in 1998, is a specialized psychometric instrument constructed to evaluate self-reported enactment of traditional masculine behavioral norms across diverse ethnoracial groups. While conventional masculinity ideology measures historically prioritized cognitive beliefs and prescriptive cultural attitudes—often derived from homogeneous White middle-class populations—the MMIS behavior subscale directly captures the behavioral manifestations of hegemonic masculinity. Comprising 35 self-report items, the instrument operationalizes key behavioral domains, including emotional restriction, affective stoicism, interpersonal dominance, physical aggression, competitive occupational striving, breadwinning priorities, heteronormative sexual prowess, risk-taking, homophobia, and reluctance toward physiological or psychological help-seeking. Administered across standard Likert-type response formats assessing behavioral frequency or descriptive agreement, the scale displays robust psychometric properties across multiethnic cohorts, including African American, Hispanic/Latino, and European American men. Psychometric investigations have demonstrated solid internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging between .75 and .88 for composite and dimensional indices), satisfactory test-retest reliability, and well-supported convergent validity with established gender-role inventories such as the Male Role Norms Scale (MRNS) and the Male Role Attitudes Scale (MRAS). Furthermore, the scale exhibits notable predictive validity regarding health-risk behaviors, psychological distress, relationship satisfaction, and interpersonal aggression. By disentangling behavioral enactment from abstract normative expectations, the MMIS Behavior Subscale provides researchers and clinical psychologists with an indispensable measurement tool for multicultural gender studies, health psychology, and clinical interventions.

Keywords

Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale, MMIS, Masculinity Ideology, Male Gender Role Norms, Emotional Restrictiveness, Masculine Behavior, Cross-Cultural Psychometrics, Gender Role Conflict, Help-Seeking Behavior, Aggression

Authors

The Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale (MMIS) and its corresponding behavior assessment were authored by Brian D. Doss and J. Roy Hopkins. At the time of the instrument’s development and validation, the authors conducted their empirical psychometric research through the Department of Psychology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, located in St. Mary’s City, Maryland, United States. Dr. Brian D. Doss later advanced into distinguished academic and clinical posts, establishing prominence as a professor of psychology at the University of Miami, specializing in couple therapy, interpersonal relationships, and quantitative clinical research methodology. Dr. J. Roy Hopkins served as an influential professor of psychology and academic administrator, contributing extensively to developmental psychology, cross-cultural psychology, and gender role acquisition.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the MMIS Corresponding Behavior Questions is to quantify the frequency and intensity with which men translate internal cultural scripts of masculinity into observable behavioral patterns. For decades, psychometric research within the psychology of men and masculinities faced a conceptual and empirical limitation: instruments frequently conflated normative beliefs (what men ought to think or do) with actual behavioral adherence (what men actually do in everyday interpersonal, emotional, and social encounters). The MMIS was explicitly designed to rectify this limitation by introducing parallel dimensions that separate cognitive ideological endorsement from corresponding behavioral enactment.

In research contexts, the scale provides an essential diagnostic and empirical apparatus for examining how masculine socialization operates across distinct cultural, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Prevailing instruments developed during the late 20th century were heavily normed on predominantly White, undergraduate university samples, rendering them vulnerable to ethnocentric bias and failing to reflect the unique historical, socioeconomic, and cultural dynamics influencing African American and Latino men. The MMIS behavioral items systematically reflect multifaceted male socialization patterns, allowing researchers to explore how race and ethnicity moderate the relationship between masculine behavioral conformity and functional life outcomes.

Clinically, the MMIS behavior subscale serves as a vital diagnostic aid in individual psychotherapy, couples counseling, and community-based health promotion. High scores across restrictive behavioral items—such as emotional concealment, extreme self-reliance, hypersexuality, and aggressive conflict resolution—frequently correlate with deleterious clinical outcomes, including major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, somatization, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, and chronic underutilization of medical and psychiatric healthcare services. By identifying specific behavioral domains wherein a client manifests rigid adherence to traditional masculine scripts, mental health practitioners can formulate targeted behavioral interventions, facilitate emotional awareness, decrease interpersonal hostility, and foster adaptive coping strategies.

Psychological Construct

The MMIS Corresponding Behavior Questions operationalize the psychological construct of masculine behavioral conformity within a culturally contextualized framework. This multifaceted construct reflects the degree to which an individual’s actualized daily activities, emotional expressions, relational strategies, and self-presentation align with traditional patriarchal mandates of manhood. The scale captures several interrelated behavioral dimensions:

• Emotional Restrictiveness and Stoicism: This dimension assesses the active suppression of vulnerable affective states, sadness, fear, and tender emotions. Behaviors reflect deliberate emotional masking, the avoidance of crying in adverse circumstances, and viewing emotional disclosure as a marker of psychological weakness (e.g., Item 2: “I usually do not let others know how I am feeling”; Item 21: “I do not cry when something bad happens to me or my loved ones”; Item 32: “I don’t show emotion because it would mean that I was weak”).
• Physical Toughness, Dominance, and Aggressive Problem-Solving: This facet captures behavioral inclinations toward physical confrontation, interpersonal assertiveness bordering on intimidation, and aggressive posturing to resolve conflict or acquire desired resources (e.g., Item 5: “When I am mad at someone, I am likely to fight”; Item 22: “When I want something, I use aggressive ways to get it”).
• Hypersexuality and Relational Detachment: Reflecting traditional masculine scripts surrounding sexual prowess and conqueror archetypes, this component evaluates behaviors prioritizing frequent sexual intercourse, casual sexual conquest, external physical aesthetics over relational depth, and the decoupling of sexual behavior from emotional intimacy (e.g., Item 4: “Having a lot of sex partners would make me feel really good about myself”; Item 8: “My date’s looks are more important to me than her personality”; Item 31: “I had (or will have) sexual intercourse at my first opportunity”).
• Instrumental Breadwinning and Status Striving: This dimension encompasses behaviors dedicated to financial achievement, competitive career prioritization, economic protectionism, and using socioeconomic status markers as primary expressions of familial care and masculine adequacy (e.g., Item 6: “Providing for my family will be my main goal in life”; Item 19: “I buy or wear stuff to make me look richer than I actually am”; Item 25: “The main way I plan to care for my family is to get the highest paying job I can”).
• Autonomous Self-Reliance and Help-Seeking Avoidance: Characterized by the refusal to seek social or professional assistance during physical or psychological distress, this construct reflects an insistence on unilateral problem resolution, enduring hardships without vocalization, and suppressing vulnerability (e.g., Item 12: “In difficult times, I try to be tough”; Item 35: “I ask for help when I need it” [reverse-scored]).
• Homophobia and Homosocial Restraint: Evaluating behavioral patterns in male-male peer relations, this facet measures the avoidance of affectionate homosocial intimacy and social discomfort or resistance toward gay male peers (e.g., Item 3: “I would be able to have a good male friend who was homosexual” [reverse-scored]; Item 7: “I hug my close guy friends” [reverse-scored]).
• Reckless Thrill-Seeking and Risk Proneness: This dimension gauges voluntary participation in hazardous or dangerous activities driven by thrills, adrenaline, or external validation of bravado (e.g., Item 29: “I look for danger just for the thrill of it”; Item 33: “When there is something I want, I will take risks to get it”).

Theoretical Framework

The MMIS is grounded in gender role socialization theory and the Gender Role Strain Paradigm (GRSP), formulated prominently by Joseph H. Pleck (1981, 1995). Pleck challenged the traditional “gender identity paradigm,” which conceptualized masculinity as an innate, biologically anchored developmental milestone essential for psychological stability. Instead, the gender role strain paradigm posits that gender roles are socially constructed, inherently contradictory, historically contingent, and operationally restrictive definitions of behavioral conformity.

According to Pleck’s paradigm, individuals experience gender role strain through three distinct mechanisms:

1. Discrepancy Strain: Distress experienced when a person fails to fulfill the idealized, unrealistic mandates of traditional masculinity.
2. Trauma Strain: Psychological distress resulting from the traumatic nature of male socialization itself (e.g., harsh emotional suppression, enforced aggression, and peer-enforced compliance).
3. Dysfunction Strain: Psychological and interpersonal damage resulting directly from successful fulfillment of masculine norms (e.g., emotional alexithymia, physical violence, relational estrangement, and early cardiovascular mortality due to health neglect).

In addition to Pleck’s framework, the MMIS draws foundational tenets from intersectionality theory and cultural-ecological paradigms (e.g., Majors & Billson, 1992). Culturally diverse populations—such as African American and Latino men—frequently navigate systemic racism, socioeconomic disenfranchisement, and structural marginalization. In response, masculine behavior may manifest through culturally specific compensatory mechanisms, such as the “cool pose” (detached, unflappable demeanor among Black males) or nuanced expressions of machismo (incorporating both aggressive dominance and caballerismo—protective, chivalrous family provision). Doss and Hopkins established the MMIS to capture these dynamic behavioral nuances, ensuring that the theoretical operationalization reflects both cross-cultural universals and ethnic-specific variations.

Validity

The validity of the MMIS Corresponding Behavior Questions has been confirmed through numerous empirical psychometric investigations assessing construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive criteria:

• Construct Validity: Doss and Hopkins (1998) established construct validity by administering the MMIS across ethnically diverse cohorts comprising African American, Hispanic/Latino, and European American men. Factor analytic models demonstrated that the underlying behavioral dimensions maintained structural stability across distinct cultural cohorts, confirming that the scale accurately captures universal masculine behavioral constructs while remaining sensitive to ethnic subcultural variation.
• Convergent Validity: Statistically significant positive correlations have been reported between the MMIS behavior scores and existing measures of masculine ideology and gender role conformity, such as the Male Role Norms Scale (MRNS) (Thompson & Pleck, 1986), the Male Role Attitudes Scale (MRAS), and the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory (CMNI) (Mahalik et al., 2003). Correlation coefficients between MMIS behavioral aggregates and the MRNS generally range from r = .48 to r = .68 (p < .001), indicating substantial conceptual overlap while preserving unique behavioral variance.
• Discriminant Validity: Discriminant validity has been corroborated through low or non-significant correlations with unrelated personality dimensions (such as the Openness to Experience domain of the NEO-PI-R, where correlations typically fail to reach significance, |r| < .15) and standard social desirability scales (e.g., Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale, r = -.08 to -.14, p > .05), suggesting that responses are not purely driven by impression management.
• Predictive and Criterion Validity: The MMIS behavior questions successfully predict observable health-compromising behaviors and interpersonal outcomes. Research documented in violence prevention compendiums (e.g., Flood, 2008) confirms that elevated scores on the aggressive and hypersexual subscales significantly predict self-reported physical aggression, hostility toward women, tolerance of rape myths, and relationship distress. Furthermore, high behavioral conformity on the help-seeking avoidance items significantly predicts decreased rates of preventative healthcare visits and negative attitudes toward seeking psychological help.

Reliability

The MMIS Corresponding Behavior Questions demonstrate robust internal consistency and temporal stability across clinical and non-clinical populations:

• Internal Consistency: In the initial validation study conducted by Doss and Hopkins (1998), the complete MMIS behavior subscale exhibited an overall Cronbach’s alpha (α) of .82 across the total sample. Within distinct ethnic subsamples, the reliability coefficients remained consistently high: African American men (α = .79 to .84), Hispanic/Latino men (α = .81 to .85), and European American men (α = .83 to .87). The individual behavioral subdimensions display satisfactory alpha values, with most subscales reporting α coefficients between .71 and .84. Lower reliability estimates (α ≈ .65–.69) are occasionally observed for briefer factor clusters containing three or fewer items (e.g., homosocial hugging/friendship items), which is consistent with classic psychometric test length theory.
• Test-Retest Reliability: Longitudinal and test-retest evaluations over intervals ranging from two to six weeks have demonstrated strong temporal stability. Doss and Hopkins reported a test-retest reliability coefficient of r = .81 across a four-week evaluation window, indicating that while specific behaviors fluctuate based on situational demands, the enduring behavioral patterns assessed by the instrument remain stable over time.
• Inter-Item and Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations for the 35 behavioral items predominantly exceed .35, with core affective restriction and risk-taking items ranging between .42 and .63, confirming solid psychometric cohesion.

Factor Analysis

During the developmental phase of the MMIS, Doss and Hopkins (1998) subjected the candidate pool of behavioral items to exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations to ascertain the latent structure of the instrument across multiethnic groups.

The EFA yielded an interpretable multi-factor solution that accounted for over 48% of the total variance. Primary factors identified in the behavioral domain include:

1. Emotional Inexpressiveness and Stoicism: Loading strongly on items evaluating the concealment of feelings, refusal to cry, and suppression of vulnerability (e.g., Item 2, Item 21, Item 32; factor loadings > .55).
2. Aggressive Dominance and Interpersonal Assertiveness: Characterized by high loadings on physical fighting, aggressive conflict strategies, and competitive dominance (e.g., Item 5, Item 22; factor loadings > .60).
3. Heterosexual Promiscuity and Status: Marked by items reflecting sexual partner accumulation, early sexual engagement, and detachment from emotional commitment (e.g., Item 4, Item 11, Item 31; factor loadings > .50).
4. Status Provision and Family Protection: Defined by items measuring breadwinning imperatives, material display of wealth, and protective posturing (e.g., Item 6, Item 19, Item 24, Item 25; factor loadings ranging from .48 to .65).
5. Autonomous Vulnerability and Help-Seeking: Comprising reverse-keyed items measuring interpersonal support, asking for assistance, and maintaining cross-orientation or close homosocial friendships (e.g., Item 3, Item 7, Item 35; loadings > .45).

Subsequent confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) performed in cross-validation cohorts corroborated the multi-dimensional structure. Goodness-of-fit indicators confirmed acceptable to excellent fit: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > .91, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) > .90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) ≈ .052 (90% CI [.046, .058]), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) ≈ .057. Multi-group CFA demonstrated metric invariance across African American, Hispanic, and White samples, confirming that the factor loadings operate equivalently across diverse cultural backgrounds.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale – Corresponding Behavior Questions (MMIS Behavior Subscale)
• Authors: Brian D. Doss and J. Roy Hopkins (1998)
• Construct Assessed: Self-reported behavioral conformity to traditional, multicultural masculine gender norms
• Number of Items: 35 self-report behavioral statements
• Target Population: Adolescent and adult males (applicable across diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural groups)
• Response Format: Standard Likert-type scaling (commonly administered on a 5-point or 6-point continuum ranging from 1 = Strongly Disagree / Never to 5 or 6 = Strongly Agree / Always depending on study-specific behavioral frequency vs. descriptive agreement protocol)
• Administration Time: Approximately 10 to 15 minutes
• Scoring Guidelines:
  • Directly scored items reflect adherence to traditional masculine behavioral norms, where higher numerical ratings represent greater conformity.
  • Reverse-scored items reflect non-traditional, egalitarian, or emotionally expressive behaviors (e.g., Items 1, 3, 7, 13, 15, 26, 27, 30, and 35). These items must be reverse-coded prior to composite or subscale computation.
  • Subscale scores are derived by calculating the mean or sum of items within designated dimensional clusters; a global Behavioral Masculinity Conformity Index can be computed by summing all recoded items.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale (MMIS) was formally published in 1998 in the peer-reviewed journal Sex Roles (Vol. 38, Iss. 9/10, pp. 719–741). The scale is considered an academic research instrument. It is published in the public scholarly domain for non-commercial educational and scientific research purposes, subject to standard academic citation practices.

The behavioral subscale has also been reproduced in independent scholarly compendiums, including Michael Flood’s (2008) Measures for the Assessment of Dimensions of Violence Against Women: A Compendium (page 40), published under the auspices of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI). Researchers, clinicians, and educators intending to reproduce, digitize, or administer the MMIS in clinical trials or funded investigations are encouraged to cite the original authors appropriately. No standardized commercial test fee is required for non-profit academic research use.

References

• Doss, B. D., & Hopkins, J. R. (1998). The Multicultural Masculinity Ideology Scale: Validation from three cultural perspectives. Sex Roles, 38(9–10), 719–741. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018875528652
• Flood, M. (2008). Measures for the assessment of dimensions of violence against women: A compendium. Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI). http://www.svri.org/measures.pdf
• Levant, R. F., & Richmond, K. (2007). A review of research on masculinity ideologies using the Male Role Norms Inventory. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 15(2), 130–146. https://doi.org/10.3149/jms.1502.130
• Mahalik, J. R., Locke, B. D., Ludlow, L. H., Diemer, M. A., Scott, R. P., Gottfried, M., & Freitas, G. (2003). Development of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 4(1), 3–16. https://doi.org/10.1037/1524-9220.4.1.3
• Majors, R., & Billson, J. M. (1992). Cool pose: The dilemmas of Black manhood in America. Lexington Books.
• Pleck, J. H. (1981). The myth of masculinity. MIT Press.
• Pleck, J. H. (1995). The gender role strain paradigm: An update. In R. F. Levant & W. S. Pollack (Eds.), A new psychology of men (pp. 11–32). Basic Books.
• Thompson, E. H., & Pleck, J. H. (1986). The structure of male role norms. American Behavioral Scientist, 29(5), 531–543. https://doi.org/10.1177/000276486029005003

Items of the Scale