The review, published in Frontiers in Social Psychology by a team at the University of Foggia in Italy, examined how researchers have operationalized exposure to social media content that stereotypes, sexualizes, objectifies, or discriminates against women. Led by Barbara Agueli and Ciro Esposito, the team followed the PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews, searching Scopus, Web of Science, and PsycINFO for studies published since March 2020, a cutoff chosen because the COVID-19 pandemic dramatically reshaped social media use among young people. After screening 3,574 records with near-perfect inter-rater agreement, only eight studies made the final cut.

That small number is itself a finding. Of the eight studies, just one developed a purpose-built instrument for directly analyzing online content: a Sexualization Coding Scale applied to 1,920 Twitch livestream clips, organized into context and behavior dimensions with scores from 0 to 14, showing strong inter-rater reliability and internal consistency. That study found women streamers were significantly more sexualized than men, particularly in categories like ASMR and Pools/Hot Tubs. Every other study relied on self-reported exposure questionnaires, informal qualitative coding, or ad hoc perceptual scales.

The distinction matters more than it might seem. The review draws on a well-established framework in media research that separates three conceptually distinct levels of exposure. Perceived exposure refers to individuals’ subjective reports of how often they encounter specific content. Actual exposure refers to objectively recorded behavioral traces such as logged platform activity or browsing histories. Content properties refer to the objective characteristics of the material itself, assessed through structured content analysis. These levels capture related but different phenomena, and decades of research show they frequently diverge.

Indeed, previous meta-analytic work has documented substantial discrepancies between what people self-report about their digital media use and what their devices actually log. None of the eight studies in the review measured actual exposure through behavioral or trace data. And only two directly examined content at all, with just one proposing a standardized measurement framework. The result is a literature that knows a great deal about how young people feel about gendered content, and remarkably little about what that content actually contains or how prevalent it is.

The studies that did make it into the review illustrate the pattern. A randomized controlled trial of 150 women tested whether protective filtering strategies could buffer the effects of beauty-ideal Instagram imagery on body image, using validated psychometric scales, but never coded the Instagram content itself. A cross-sectional survey of 6,093 US adolescents linked sexualizing media exposure to sexting behaviors, mediated largely by the belief that sexting is fun, yet exposure was measured entirely through self-report. A Dutch study of 255 sexually active adolescents connected consumption of sexualized posts to sexual coercion perpetration and victimization, moderated by sexual double standards, again without verifying what participants actually saw. A mixed-methods Spanish study associated ambivalent sexism with Instagram and Snapchat use, and a qualitative analysis of 316 choking-related memes across Twitter/X, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit revealed how such content eroticizes and normalizes potentially dangerous practices, often along gendered lines, but lacked any standardized coding instrument.

Why does this gap persist? The authors point to the sheer difficulty of the task. Social media content is dynamic, heterogeneous, and shaped by platform algorithms that curate different material for different users. Sexism online rarely announces itself; it is embedded in humor, irony, trends, and aestheticized self-presentation, making it less readily recognizable as discriminatory. Platform affordances compound the problem: scalability and persistence let discriminatory content reach vast audiences and remain accessible indefinitely, while recommender systems can amplify sexualized or stereotypical material, and metrics like likes and shares provide social validation that reinforces gendered norms through peer approval.

The stakes are highest for adolescents and young adults, developmental stages marked by heightened sensitivity to peer evaluation, identity formation, and body image concerns. Social media are central contexts where meanings about gender, sexuality, and social value are negotiated during these years. Repeated exposure to stereotypical or objectifying representations has been linked to self-objectification, body surveillance, internalization of gender norms, endorsement of traditional roles, and reduced sensitivity to gender-based violence. Without precise measurement tools, the researchers argue, it remains impossible to determine which specific characteristics of digital content drive these outcomes.

The review’s authors propose a way forward. Future instruments, they argue, should be standardized, theory-driven, and capable of capturing the multidimensional nature of gender discrimination, spanning not only sexualization but also stereotyping, objectification, and subtle normalized forms of sexism. They suggest drawing on the classic tripartite structure of attitudes, measuring cognitive recognition of discriminatory content, affective responses to it, and behavioral tendencies to engage with or share it. They also advocate integrating multiple data sources, combining content analysis with self-reported exposure and behavioral trace data, and incorporating computational methods to scale analysis across rapidly evolving formats like short-form video and livestreaming.

The methodological gap identified here is not merely an academic inconvenience. Interventions designed to protect young people from gender-discriminatory content depend on knowing what that content is, where it circulates, and how much of it users actually encounter. As the authors conclude, advancing the field requires moving beyond an exclusive focus on perceived exposure toward integrated measurement frameworks that link subjective experience, objective exposure patterns, and the structural features of the content itself. Until such tools exist, our picture of the digital environments shaping a generation’s gender attitudes remains, quite literally, a matter of perception.

Subject of Research: Measurement of gender-discriminatory content on social media among adolescents and young adults

Article Title: How is gender-discriminatory content measured on social media? A systematic review revealing a critical gap in measurement tools

Article References: Agueli, B., Sulla, F., Fiorentino, G., Spinelli, A., Merafina, N., Marinelli, C. V., & Esposito, C. (2026). How is gender-discriminatory content measured on social media? A systematic review revealing a critical gap in measurement tools. Frontiers in Social Psychology, 4, Article 1844371. https://doi.org/10.3389/frsps.2026.1844371

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frsps.2026.1844371

Keywords: social media, gender discrimination, sexism, systematic review, measurement tools, adolescents, psychology, content analysis, gender-discriminatory, content, measured, social

The review, led by Marisol Lila, Enrique Gracia, Cristina Expósito-Álvarez and Rocío Pérez-Sabater of the University of Valencia, draws together systematic reviews, meta-analyses and methodologically rigorous primary studies, with particular emphasis on findings from samples of known male perpetrators rather than community surveys alone. The authors argue that understanding individual-level psychological processes is essential for improving prevention and intervention, even though violence ultimately arises from interacting influences across multiple social and ecological levels. Their synthesis organizes the evidence into two broad domains: developmental and clinical vulnerabilities on one hand, and cognitive-affective drivers on the other.

In the first domain, the reviewers examine childhood trauma exposure, personality disorders, insecure attachment and substance use. Meta-analyses consistently show that men who experienced maltreatment in childhood, whether abuse, neglect or witnessing violence between their own parents, face elevated odds of becoming violent toward their partners in adulthood. The association is reliable but not deterministic; most survivors of childhood adversity never perpetrate violence. Studies of probation samples and batterer intervention programs further indicate that cumulative trauma predicts offending severity, and that post-traumatic stress symptoms among perpetrators are linked to treatment engagement difficulties and higher recidivism. Recent work also highlights the role of masculine discrepancy stress, the distress some men feel when they perceive themselves as falling short of masculine ideals, in linking childhood trauma to later violence through emotion dysregulation.

Personality pathology emerges as another robust thread. A meta-analysis in Clinical Psychology Review found that personality disorders, particularly borderline and antisocial configurations, predict intimate partner violence perpetration. Related research on narcissism and psychopathy shows that these traits not only raise the risk of violence but also forecast worse treatment outcomes, including dropout and repeated reassault among program participants. The classic typology of male batterers proposed by Holtzworth-Munroe and Stuart in the 1990s, which distinguished subtypes differing in severity and generality of violence, continues to find empirical support, with subtypes differing in treatment completion and recidivism. Attachment insecurity adds a further layer: meta-analytic work shows that both anxious and avoidant attachment dimensions are associated with perpetration, often operating through psychological distress, substance use and affect dysregulation.

Substance use occupies a prominent place in the review. Meta-analyses confirm that alcohol problems are among the most consistent correlates of partner violence, and event-based diary studies show that physical aggression is far more likely to occur on days when men drink. The reviewers describe mechanisms such as alcohol myopia, in which intoxication narrows attention to immediate provocations and impairs inhibitory control, while noting that antisocial personality traits and trait jealousy can moderate the alcohol-violence link. Illicit drug use, including marijuana and opioids, shows similar associations in samples of men arrested for domestic violence. Importantly, substance use also predicts treatment attrition, meaning that offenders with alcohol and drug problems are less likely to complete the very programs designed to change their behavior, although those who do complete can show meaningful gains.

The second broad domain concerns cognitive-affective drivers: cognitive dysfunctions, anger and hostility, empathy deficits, and sexist or otherwise violence-supportive attitudes. Neuropsychological research summarized in the review points to subtle but reliable deficits in executive functioning among perpetrators, including impulsivity, poor attention switching and impaired working memory, which together undermine the capacity to inhibit aggressive responses during conflict. Meta-analytic evidence on anger and hostility confirms that these emotional states are among the strongest psychological correlates of perpetration, and clinical studies show that anger disturbances predict long-term criminal recidivism. The reviewers emphasize shared mechanisms that cut across domains: emotion dysregulation, hostile attribution of intent to a partner’s behavior, and impaired inhibitory control appear repeatedly as pathways through which childhood trauma, personality pathology, attachment insecurity and intoxication are translated into violence.

Empathy and related social-cognitive capacities also feature prominently. Studies of court-mandated offenders reveal deficits in emotional decoding, perspective taking and empathic concern, and some work documents atypical facial responses to others’ suffering, with low sadness and even elevated happiness displayed toward victims’ distress. Alexithymia, the difficulty identifying and describing one’s own emotions, is associated with impulsivity and cognitive and empathic dysfunction in perpetrators and offers new targets for intervention. Neuroimaging studies add biological texture, linking coercive partner behavior to lower brain volume in emotion-regulation regions and altered resting-state connectivity in social mentalizing networks, although the authors caution that such findings describe correlates rather than proven causes.

Attitudes complete the cognitive picture. The review examines ambivalent sexism, distinguishing hostile sexism, which protects men’s power, from benevolent sexism, which guards traditional gender roles, and cites meta-analytic evidence linking both to violence-against-women attitudes and behaviors. Perpetrators commonly deploy denial, minimization, justification and victim-blaming, and validated scales now measure the perceived severity, acceptability and responsibility attribution surrounding intimate partner violence against women among both the general population and offenders. Implicit attitudes toward violence have even been shown to predict treatment outcomes, suggesting that conscious beliefs capture only part of the attitudinal architecture sustaining abuse.

Crucially, the reviewers stress that these psychological drivers show small-to-moderate but reliable associations with perpetration and predict clinically relevant outcomes, including violence severity, treatment engagement and dropout, and recidivism. No single factor is sufficient, and the drivers rarely operate in isolation; instead they interact through shared mechanisms. This convergence leads the authors to argue that psychological explanations should be understood as complementary to, not competing with, broader ecological accounts of intimate partner violence. The practical payoff is a case for assessment-guided, responsivity-based interventions tailored to each perpetrator’s individual risk profile, consistent with the risk-need-responsivity model of offender rehabilitation.

Evidence for such tailoring is already accumulating. Randomized controlled trials of the Strength at Home program, which addresses trauma-related emotional dysregulation, have reduced partner violence in military and civilian samples. Integrated treatments combining cognitive behavioral therapy with substance abuse care have shown efficacy for substance-dependent offenders, and motivational enhancement therapy for alcohol problems among partner-violent men has produced promising results. Pilot trials of cognitive training designed for perpetrators have improved cognitive flexibility and reaction time, while individualized motivational plans within batterer intervention programs have improved completion rates. The Valencia group’s own randomized trial of integrated motivational strategies for perpetrators with substance use problems adds further support. Together, these findings suggest that the era of one-size-fits-all batterer programs may be giving way to a more precise, psychologically informed science of intervention, one that treats the wounded boy behind the violent man not as an excuse for abuse, but as a clinical target in the service of safety for women.

Subject of Research: Psychological drivers of men's perpetration of intimate partner violence against women

Article Title: Psychological drivers of men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence against women

Article References: Lila, M., Gracia, E., Expósito-Álvarez, C., & Pérez-Sabater, R. (2026). Psychological drivers of men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence against women. Nature Reviews Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-026-00616-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1038/s44159-026-00616-4

Keywords: intimate partner violence, perpetrators, childhood trauma, personality disorders, attachment insecurity, substance use, anger and hostility, empathy deficits, sexism, emotion dysregulation, recidivism, batterer intervention programs