The aim of this thesis is to study male questioning of masculinity. The study of the questioning will be conducted through a literature study, that will be done using an anthology that holds a critical perspective towards masculinity. The study of the questioning, will be done through mapping the most common patterns within the questioning together with patterns in the form used for presenting the questioning. Apart from the focus on the questioning and its form, which norms that are being questioned will also be studied. Apart from the focuses mentioned above, the last focus is directed towards finding patterns within the chosen themes vulnerability and homosociality. Since the focuses of the thesis will be studied through finding patterns within the material, thematic analysis will be used as a method. The method queer reading will also be used for studying norms. What has been found is that the form of the questioning mainly contains alternative thinking and reflections about ideals, as well as frustration related to trying to live up to these ideals. Overall few innovatory perspectives were brought up in the questioning, but the own father was rather commonly brought up in relation to reflection of the own masculinity. Regarding the chosen themes, avoiding to express emotions of vulnerability openly was found to be most common regarding vulnerability. Within the theme of homosociality, the most common pattern was that the men maintained a distance to each other. The most interesting discovery was found within the reflective form, which became interesting, since the stories contained an understanding that reflection should be avoided in order to uphold a masculine identity. Paradoxically then, the overall form of the material was reflective stories, making the form of the stories a break against a central norm found within their content.

Perspective taking is typically defined as the ability to reason about others’ mental states (e.g. their beliefs, thoughts, desires, and intentions) and to understand the role of those mental states in everyday situations (I. A. Apperly, 2012). Traditional accounts of perspective taking typically analyze the ability based on three different domains: visual, affective or emotional, and cognitive perspective taking (Flavell, 2004). From a behavioral viewpoint, perspective taking skills are built upon the ability to recognize our own behavior in relation to the context. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is a contemporary behavioral account of human language and cognition (Hayes et al., 2007). From an RFT viewpoint, perspective-taking skills involve deictic relations between individuals, spaces, and time. Instead of using the three dimensions analyzed in the other fields, RFT studies the development of complex perspective-taking skills through three types of deictic frames: interpersonal (I-YOU-OTHER), spatial (HERE-THERE), and temporal (NOW-THEN-LATER). The purpose of this dissertation was to develop a set of behavioral assessments to measure visual, emotional, and cognitive perspective-taking skills from an RFT viewpoint. This dissertation made methodological and empirical contributions to the field by proposing three behavioral computer-based protocols for evaluating the role of deictic frames on visual, emotional, and cognitive perspective taking tasks. Experiment 1 results revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal and spatial deictic frames at simple and reverse levels of complexity on a visual perspective-taking task. These findings suggested that transforming stimulus functions following a mutually entailed relationship between interpersonal and spatial frames is not equivalent to performing conditional discriminations involving both interpersonal and spatial stimuli. Experiment 2 results revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal frames with simple, reverse, and double reverse levels of complexity on an emotional perspective-taking task. The finding showed that as the complexity of the deictic relations in emotional perspective taking increased, so did the number of errors and latency to respond. Furthermore, the findings of the study indicate that the valence of emotions has an effect on the levels of deictic relational responding. On a cognitive perspective-taking task, the results of Experiment 3 revealed significant differences in response latency and correct response levels on interpersonal frames with simple and reverse levels of complexity. False beliefs and false desires increased the number of errors and latency to respond to interpersonal deictic frames, according to the findings. Overall, these protocols improved the ecological validity of RFT-based protocols of deictic frames, extended previous research on perspective taking, and opened up new research avenues.