The Relationship Between Conformity to Masculine Norms and Men’s Health Behaviors: Testing a Multiple Mediator Model

Relationships between men’s scores on subscales of the Conformity to Masculine Norms Inventory-46 (CMNI-46) and the Health Behavior Inventory-20 (HBI-20) are complex. Some subscales appear to act as risk factors, as predicted by the Gender Role Strain Paradigm (GRSP), and others as protective buffers, as predicted by positive masculinity and social norms theories. We compared the relative strengths of these two theories in explaining the buffering effects by assessing the roles of two theorized positive aspects of the traditional masculine role (general self-efficacy and emotional stability) and a key construct of social norms theory (perceptions of men’s normative health behaviors) in mediating the relationships between CMNI-46 and HBI-20. We evaluated a multiple mediator model of these relationships with 585 men who responded to an online survey. Emotional stability was not a mediator, but general self-efficacy and perceptions of normative health behaviors together partially mediated the relationship between CMNI-46 and HBI-20, transmitting a protective buffering effect. However, an examination of the individual mediating effects indicated that perceptions of normative health behaviors better accounted for the buffering effect. The results are discussed in terms of future research, implications for health care practitioners, and limitations.