Psychopathology of incel (involuntary celibate): the predictive role of depression, paranoia, and fearful attachment style.

The term “Incel”, which means “involuntary celibate”, refers to the members of an online subculture, mainly composed by heterosexual men. These subjects find difficult or impossible to have a romantic and / or a sexual partner and they move on to attacks and manifestations of hatred towards the female gender, until they transform, in the most extreme cases, in real violent acts no longer limited to the virtual world. In this study, we aim to investigate psychopathological issues related to INCEL phenomenon. Seven hundred and seventy males (aged 18-69, M age= 29.04) were administered a series of questionnaires through the online platform QUALTRICS, investigating demographic information, incel traits (Incel traits scales, (Scaptura and Boyle, 2021), depression and anxiety levels (GAD-2 and PHQ-2, Staples et al., 2019), attachment style (Relationship Questionnaire, Bartholomew e Horowitz, 1991) and paranoia symptoms (Paranoia total score from Personality Assessment Inventory, Morey et al, 2015). Pearson correlation, and hierarchical linear regression were performed to assess the relationship between variables. We found positive correlations between INCEL scale and paranoia (r=.366; p<0.01), anxiety (r=.399, p<0.01), depression (.483; p<0.01). However, regression analysis showed relevant predictive values of paranoia (β=.139; p<0.0001), depression (β=.248; p<0.0001) and fearful attachment style (β=.207; p<0.0001) on INCEL scale, with a good of model equal to a r-adjusted of .41. On the other hand, secure attachment style plays a protective role towards the INCEL attitude (β=.215; p<0.0001). INCEL subjects and their related behavior towards couple life and female world could be conditioned by several psychopathological issues. In particular, paranoid thinking and depressive-anxious symptoms play a pivotal role in the INCEL attitude. Moreover, as hypothesized, peculiar aspects of primary relationship conditionate this misogynic attitude, particularly fearful attachment style. Therefore, clinicians should consider INCEL people in the light of these psychopathological aspects here described. none