Misogynistic attitudes have surged in the past few years and the “manosphere” – an online milieu promoting toxic and rigid masculinity norms – is often seen as an arena for spreading such ideas. Within the manosphere, manfluencers (i.e., male influencers who espouse misogynistic content and beliefs) are known for trying to persuade men to view women and feminism as a threat to their masculinity and status as men. In this article, we examine how perceived threats to masculine identity as presented by manfluencers affect the formation of young men’s attitudes towards women. In an original survey (N = 2857) with Swedish men, we found that young men who follow more manfluencers are more likely to dehumanize women. In two experiments (N = 597, 630), we presented potentially threatening content from a fictive manfluencer to a group of participants and found that young men exposed to such content were more mistrustful of women and misogynistic, especially if they felt like they had been rejected by women in the past. The results highlight the importance of how social media influencers may increase misogyny among young men. This research has important implications for policymakers and practitioners, who should be made aware of the role manfluencers have in the formation of attitudes toward gender equality.

厌女态度在过去几年中激增，“大气层”——一种提倡有毒和僵化的男子气概规范的网络环境——通常被视为传播此类思想的舞台。在大气层中，manfluencers（即支持厌女内容和信仰的男性影响者）以试图说服男性将女性和女权主义视为对他们的男子气概和男性地位的威胁而闻名。在本文中，我们研究了 manfluencers 对男性身份的感知威胁如何影响年轻男性对女性态度的形成。在对瑞典男性进行的原始调查 （N = 2857） 中，我们发现追随更多男性影响者的年轻男性更有可能使女性失去人性。在两个实验 （N = 597， 630） 中，我们向一组参与者展示了来自虚构的 manfluencer 的潜在威胁内容，发现接触此类内容的年轻男性对女性更加不信任和厌恶女性，特别是如果他们觉得自己过去曾被女性拒绝。结果强调了社交媒体影响者如何增加年轻男性厌女症的重要性。这项研究对政策制定者和从业者具有重要意义，他们应该意识到影响者在形成对性别平等的态度中的作用。