Why Some Men Find It So Hard to Give In

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Traditional gender roles emphasize male dominance and female submissiveness. A woman who doesn’t mind showing off her dominant side may be perceived as harsh, controlling, or "bossy." A dominant male counterpart, however, is perceived to be expressing gender-appropriate authority.

Males who have social anxiety, however, commonly exhibit less dominance, which causes internalized shame.

According to Temple University’s Jacob Zimmerman, Amanda Morrison, and Richard Heimburg (2015), gender differences in the submissive-dominant pole of behavior become particularly pronounced in people with social anxiety disorder (SAD). This disorder is highly prevalent in adults and, with a lifetime rate of 12.5%, is considered one of the top five psychological disorders.

According to previous research by Zimmerman and colleagues, the fear of losing status or the feeling of being lower in status influences social anxiety disorder. People with SAD try to avoid drawing attention to themselves because they fear seeming inadequate. They’ll slump their shoulders and avoid the gaze of others to stay beneath the social radar and avoid being harmed. People with SAD feel embarrassed when the spotlight shines on them, afraid that they will look foolish by gaffes they may commit in public.

Men and women with SAD differ in the situations that trigger their fear of public humiliation. Women are fearful of speaking up in front of others, while men can become self-conscious about urinating in public restrooms. Men with SAD find it more difficult to meet women, and therefore are more likely to live alone and remain unattached.

There is a critical distinction between how men and women respond to SAD and gender roles, however: Because men are expected to be dominant, those who believe that they do not measure up to society’s norms feel a chronic and deep sense of inner shame. As Zimmerman and co-authors explain, “Individuals who believe that their core characteristics and behaviours are socially unacceptable and who place a great deal of value on adhering to societal expectations and norms may be at high risk for experiencing internalized shame” (p. 3). Men with SAD feel ashamed that they cannot act in the dominating, self-asserting ways consistent with the stereotypical male gender role.

Women with SAD don’t have this problem because being submissive and self-conscious is more typical of what many still see as the stereotypical female gender role. Women, in this worldview, are not supposed to speak up in meetings, so for those women who don’t, there’s no apparent social transgression. The shame that men feel over the mismatch between their social anxiety and the expectation that they should try to out-hustle everyone around them leads to a vicious cycle in which shame breeds anxiety which, in turn, breeds more shame.

To examine the possibility that submissiveness would prove more taxing on men than women with SAD, Zimmerman and team compiled a sample of 48 men and 40 women seeking treatment for SAD at a university clinic; all were adults from the community. They asked participants to complete four questionnaires based on self-reporting. Afterward, interviewers evaluated them on meeting the diagnostic criteria for SAD.

The key measure was the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale, which asks for agreement on items such as: “I tense up if I meet an acquaintance in the street,” “I have difficulty talking with other people,” and “I worry about expressing myself in case I appear awkward.”

The Submissive Behavior Scale assesses an individual’s tendency to engage in giving-in behaviors, such as avoiding eye contact or constantly apologizing for minor mistakes.

The Internalized Shame Scale asks participants to indicate whether they agree with statements such as, “Compared to other people, I feel like I somehow never measure up,” and “I feel as if I am somehow defective as a person, like there is something basically wrong with me.” To rule out the role of depression, Zimmerman, et al. also asked participants to report on the experience of a series of symptoms such as difficulty sleeping and feelings of guilt and low self-worth.

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As they expected, the Temple University researchers found that submissive behaviors were more highly related to internalized feelings of shame in men than in women. This relationship held even when the researchers controlled for scores on the depression scale. Furthermore, simple sex differences didn't seem to account for the pattern of relationships among submissiveness, social anxiety, and shame.

The findings apply only to men with SAD, not to men in general. However, because men with SAD are more likely to give in than are men in general, the findings indicate how much of a psychological toll it takes when men find it impossible to assert themselves in interpersonal situations. The shame they experience reflects their perception that they are deficient in a quality associated with their gender.

For men who do not struggle with social anxiety disorder, how might behaving in submissive ways affect them? Rather than internalizing shame feelings, men without this disorder may attempt to regain self-esteem by acting in what we might call "counter-phobic ways." Realizing that they have given in instead of asserting themselves, men who show submissiveness feel the need to act in more dominant ways than ever.

To sum up:

• If you are a woman trying to understand your male partner, or co-workers who go from submissiveness to dominance, recognize that they may do this to protect themselves from shame. If you deal with men who seem to prefer retreating into the background, their feelings of shame may keep them perpetually in a state of anxiety.
• If you’re a man who feels you constantly need to hyper-assert yourself, ask yourself if it’s really a way to protect yourself from the shame you might feel by giving in once in a while.
• For those of you with social anxiety disorder, knowing the role of submissiveness and shame may help you overcome feelings of inadequacy and find relationships that allow you to express, without fear of ridicule, your true self.

Reference

Zimmerman, J., Morrison, A. S., & Heimberg, R. G. (2015). Social anxiety, submissiveness, and shame in men and women: A moderated mediation analysis. British Journal Of Clinical Psychology, 54(1), 1-15. doi:10.1111/bjc.12057

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Copyright Susan Krauss Whitbourne 2015