Unlucky at love? Learn what personality has to do with it.
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Personality and Incel Status
To address this question, a recent study by Apostolou & Michaelidou (2024) examined 17 qualities thought to be related to incel status:
Spoiler alert, attractiveness wasn't among them
.
Mating effort,
sexual functioning, self-perceived mate value,
self-esteem,
flirting capacity, capacity to perceive signals of romantic interest,
shyness, choosiness, body mass index,
self-perceived good looks,
This last one is the closest we get to looks having been included there, but as we all know, self-perceived looks and other-perceived looks are different things.
>"Incel"
>Children from a previous relationship
Choose one ffs
.
Space doesn’t allow for a detailed discussion of the article, but I will highlight some of the key findings with particular emphasis on personality.
"Muh persoynalitee
."
incel status was strongly related to poor flirting ability. Not surprisingly, being able to flirt increases the odds of securing a mate.
I'd say being the person people want to flirt with is more important, but whatever.
It's so fucking over. Every girl wants chad and chads are like 1/10000. Each of us need to hit on 10000 girls before getting a match. You can literlley post the secret to create a nuclear bomb, how to be invisible, or how to make a million dollar in a day but roasties would rather watch chads...
incels.is
Women who were choosier were also more likely to be involuntarily single and the choosier they were, the longer they were single.
Yes. Men don't have sex or relationships because they can't find anyone who would want to be with them, women can't get sex and relationships because they can't find anyone meeting their standards. Men
are single, women
choose to be single.
The authors also found that women who were high in agreeableness and conscientiousness were more likely to be married or in a relationship than disagreeable and unconscientious women.
Not surprising.
For men, one of the most important predictors of incel status was mating effort. Because women are, under most circumstances, choosier than men when selecting a mate (Whyte, et al., 2018),
Yes.
men must put forth greater effort to convince women of their value as a partner.
"It's a numbers' game bro
."
Unironically I'd partly agree, but I'd say it flips around. The guys who try a lot might be getting laid more than those who try less, but those who don't
need to try at all, like the guy from that thread I linked above, are the ones getting laid the most.
Furthermore, there is still a cultural expectation that the man will initiate romantic contact.
Yes.
So, the more actively men pursue the more successful they tend to be.
In absolute numbers or percentages
?
The authors also found that both neuroticism and self-esteem were related to relationship status; incel men were more likely to be high in neuroticism and low in self-esteem
Gee, I wonder why
?
Many of the qualities women seek (e.g., competence) cannot be readily observed
Yeah, it's real easy to not notice six-feet-plus tallfags
.
and must be inferred from overt behavior. Because competence, power, and success, all highly sought-after qualities, tend to produce
confidence,
anxiety and low self-esteem are often interpreted as signals of low mate value.
If it's over it's hard not to know
.
Why Are Incels on the Rise?
While none of the above findings are particularly surprising, the results beg the question of why the sudden rise in incels? The answer may lie, at least partially, in cultural shifts in the prevalence of some of these personality traits. There is evidence that, since the pandemic,
"Muh pandemic caused all of this
,"
young adults have declined in both conscientiousness and agreeableness but have increased in neuroticism (Sutin et al., 2022). Each of these trends has important implications for relationships. Both low agreeableness and high neuroticism are associated with relationship difficulties (Esplin et. al., 2025; Wilmot & Ones, 2022), increasing the likelihood of breakups. As mentioned, neuroticism in males decreases their perceived mate value. Also, those higher in neuroticism (and lower in self-esteem) are also more likely to feel inadequate, insecure, and intimidated by the prospect of approaching a potential partner, thus undermining their mating effort. For females, neuroticism may also increase choosiness, as those high in neuroticism tend to view the world through a more critical (negative) lens, possibly making it more likely that they’ll reject a suitor.
Pretty funny explanation for hypergamy ngl
.
Finally, lower conscientiousness means that they may spend less effort on their appearance or spend less time honing their social skills (Apostolou & Michaelidou (2024) found that for both men and women, conscientiousness was positively related to flirting skill).
He said, just when people are more obsessed with their looks than ever before
...
