Dealing with hair loss: A mixed method, experimental survey with bald men

Male pattern hair loss or baldness is a common and physically benign occurrence in the lives of most adult men. Limited research has assessed how baldness is conceived and responded to. The exceptions to this tend to be research that has been influenced by businesses selling anti-baldness products (e.g., through funding or author links). For example, claims that baldness is severely psychologically distressing are not supported by the evidence (Huang, Fu & Chi, 2021; Frith & Jankowski, in prep) but have been made to medicalize baldness (depict it as a medical condition; Harvey 2013; Jankowski & Frith, 2021). It is important to assess what impact this medicalization has (experimental studies on other medicalized conditions suggest medicalized language can induce distress and push individuals to elect for more invasive ‘treatments’; Nickels et al., 2017). Furthermore it is not clear whether, as in the case of other bodily conditions, short anti-medicalization messages can help undo these impacts (e.g., Streuli et al., 2013). Finally, commercially independent research is needed to assess the psychosocial impact, responses and views about baldness from bald men.