Deciphering the incels: A scoping review on empirical research

• Incel (involuntary celibate): A mostly online subculture of heterosexual men who feel shut out of romantic and sexual relationships and often blame women and society for it.

• Manosphere: A network of online communities that are anti-feminist and often misogynistic. It includes men's rights activists, pick-up artists, "Men Going Their Own Way" and incels.

• Red pill / Black pill: Terms borrowed from the film The Matrix. The "red pill" is the belief that society secretly favors women. The "black pill" is a fatalistic belief that looks and genetics fix a person's romantic fate permanently, so nothing can change it.

• Lookism: The belief that people are ranked mainly by physical attractiveness.

• Chad / Stacy / Becky: Incel slang. A "Chad" is a highly attractive, sexually successful man. A "Stacy" is a highly attractive woman. A "Becky" is an average woman.

• Femoid: A dehumanizing incel slang word for women, short for "female humanoid."

• Echo chamber: An online space where shared ideas are repeated and amplified, and opposing views are rarely heard.

• Radicalization / De-radicalization: The process of adopting extremist beliefs, and the process of leaving them.

• Scoping review: A type of literature review that maps what research exists on a topic and where the gaps are. Unlike a systematic review, it does not judge the quality of each study.

• PRISMA-ScR: Internationally recognized reporting guidelines for scoping reviews.

• Qualitative / Quantitative / Mixed methods: Research based on words and meanings (such as interviews or forum posts), research based on numbers and statistics, or a combination of both.

• Thematic / Discourse analysis: Qualitative methods. Thematic analysis looks for recurring themes in data. Discourse analysis studies how language builds meaning and social reality.

• Neuroticism: A personality trait involving a tendency toward negative emotions such as anxiety and worry.

• Fearful attachment style: A pattern of relating to others that combines wanting closeness with fear of rejection.

• Cohen's Kappa: A statistic showing how much two independent reviewers agree. A value of 0.95 means almost perfect agreement.

• Cronbach's α: A measure of how consistent the items of a questionnaire are with each other.

• 3N model: A model of radicalization built on three factors: Needs (especially the need for significance), Networks and Narratives.

What specific aspects and issues have been empirically investigated in the scientific literature on incels?

It has three objectives:

1. Compile the empirical evidence on incels.

2. Synthesize the current state of knowledge.

3. Find gaps in the research to set future priorities.

Method and sample. The authors searched three databases (Web of Science, Scopus and PsycINFO) for peer-reviewed empirical studies in English or Spanish. They covered January 2017 to September 2023 and followed the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. The search returned 402 records, and 82 studies remained after screening. Two reviewers screened the studies independently, with very high agreement (Cohen's Kappa = 0.95).

Characteristics of the research

• Publication year: Most studies were published in 2022 (30, or 36.6%), followed by 2023 (27, up to September). All included studies appeared between 2019 and 2023.

• Design: Most studies were qualitative (64.6%). Quantitative studies made up 23.2% and mixed-methods studies 12.2%.

• Data: Most studies (about 67%) analyzed posts, threads, comments, images and videos from forums and social networks. About 18% used interviews or surveys, and about 12.5% used official documents, news reports or manifestos.

• Sources: About 67% used open, primary sources, meaning publicly available content.

• Analysis: The most common methods were thematic analysis (25.6%) and discourse analysis (22%).

• Sample sizes: These ranged from 7–20 interviews up to 331 million words from 11.7 million online messages.

Seven thematic areas

1. Language, discourse and narratives (35 studies, the most studied area). Incel language is full of dehumanizing metaphors. Women are called "femoids" or compared to animals, food or objects. On one large forum, misogynistic terms for women were used 2.4 times more often than neutral terms. Users already used these terms when they joined, which suggests men arrive with misogynistic views rather than developing them on the site. One study suggests that participation in these forums may deepen existing misogyny. Violent extremist language increased over the six years studied.

2. Ideology (27 studies). The black pill and lookism are central. Incels describe a rigid hierarchy (Chads, "normies"/betas, incels; Stacys and Beckys) and the "80/20 rule," the claim that 80% of women choose the top 20% of men. Incels selectively misread findings from evolutionary psychology to support biological determinism. Some studies link the starting point of incels' sense of injustice to wider social changes, such as job insecurity and growing recognition of women's and minority rights.

3. Psychosocial aspects (17 studies). Compared with non-incels, incels report more depression, anxiety and loneliness, less social support and lower life satisfaction. They also show paranoid thinking, a fearful attachment style and more harmful ways of coping. On personality tests, they score higher on neuroticism and lower on extraversion, agreeableness and openness. Only 51.5% had ever tried therapy, and only 15% felt better afterwards. Many seem to believe therapists will blame them instead of recognizing social forces such as lookism.

4. Violent behavior (17 studies). The evidence is mixed. One study found overwhelming support for the Toronto van attack among incels. Another found that 79% rejected violence. The overall picture is that most incels are not violent, but a worrying minority glorifies attackers such as Elliot Rodger and fantasizes about rape and mass violence. Unwanted celibacy was linked to hostile attitudes toward women, sexual objectification and belief in rape myths, even after accounting for personality. Posting on violent incel forums increased significantly after the COVID-19 pandemic.

5. Radicalization and exit (only 5 studies). Under the 3N model, incels have a heightened need for significance, which they meet through validating online networks and ideological narratives. Those narratives can shift them from blaming themselves to anger and violence. Reddit communities such as r/IncelExit and r/ExRedPill appear to help people leave the ideology.

6. Instruments (4 studies). Violent-extremism risk tools (VERA-2, CYBERA and TRAP-18) were applied to incel forums and to individual attackers, with the first two showing moderate-to-high risk. The Incel Trait Scale was developed in the US and validated in Italian, with good reliability. However, neither of those two scale studies included actual incel participants.

7. Other topics (14 studies). These covered dating apps and Instagram as drivers of perceived sexual "market" unfairness, the links between incel discourse and pornography, racist language and racial hierarchies, memes, algorithms that detect incels online, and YouTube recommendations steering users toward incel content.

The authors argue that these themes are not separate. They interact to form one ecosystem. Language builds the ideology. Psychological vulnerabilities feed into the ideology and are reinforced by it. Online echo chambers, often driven by a small number of very active "hyper-posters," normalize grievance and sometimes violence.

Compared with earlier reviews, they say theirs adds three things: more recent studies (up to September 2023), a focus on empirical evidence only, and an approach that draws on several disciplines.

Gaps identified

• Too much reliance on qualitative studies of public forum posts, which limits how far the findings can be generalized.

• A lack of longitudinal studies that follow people over time.

• Few direct comparisons between violent and non-violent incels.

• Little research outside English-speaking contexts.

• Little research on radicalization and exit.

• Research instruments that have not been validated across cultures or with actual incels.

• No standard definition of "incel." Most studies never ask whether participants have adopted the black pill.

Recommendations

• Methodological: Use more quantitative, mixed-methods and longitudinal designs. Validate instruments across cultures and with incel samples. Draw on more varied data sources, including closed and secondary sources.

• Direct engagement: Interviewing and surveying incels is encouraged, but with caution. These communities are known for trolling and spreading misinformation, so self-reports should be checked against observable behavior. Paying participants who hold hateful beliefs also raises ethical concerns.

• Platforms: Study how the algorithms of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube spread incel content, since these platforms reach far wider audiences than forums.

• Future topics: The overlap of racism and misogyny, the diversity of views within incel communities (including non-violent ones), mental health and neurodivergence, protective factors against violence, and how attacks come to be glorified.

• Practical: Combine individual support (mental health care) with structural measures (regulating platforms that amplify misogynistic and extremist content). Promote digital literacy and critical thinking to counter pseudoscientific narratives. Evaluate and scale up exit communities such as r/IncelExit.

The review's own limitations: It included only English and Spanish studies (a risk of Western bias), searched only three databases with limited keywords, did not contact authors when information was unclear, and did not classify studies by the country of their samples.