This month, we are excited to spotlight Carlin Hoffacker, a 2025 mentee in the Psychology of Men and Masculinities (PMM) Reviewer Mentorship Program. Carlin is a doctoral student in the Counseling Psychology Program at Indiana University and a Graduate Research Associate at the Kinsey Institute. Her research explores how men understand and navigate complex sexual experiences, with a focus on the role of masculine norms.

We spoke with Carlin about her time in the mentorship program, what she learned from working alongside experienced reviewers, and how the experience is influencing her development as a scholar in the field of men and masculinities.

How would you describe your experience in the PMM reviewer mentorship program?

My experience in the PMM reviewer mentorship program was truly supportive, rewarding, and valuable to my professional development for multiple reasons. Firstly, engaging in the review process under the mentorship of seasoned scholars has been really applicable to my own processes in research and manuscript preparation. Lessons learned regarding what reviewers look for and prioritize, how publication and revision decisions are made, and what factors coalesce to create a strong scientific piece overall will undoubtedly inform (and hopefully strengthen) my own scholarly pursuits and continued development.

Furthermore, the opportunity to meet with scholars from various corners of academia provided a great networking opportunity and a chance to learn about professional directions of which I was only vaguely aware prior to my mentorship. Finally (and perhaps most impactfully to me personally), working with mentors of different backgrounds and expertise on each manuscript helped me develop an understanding of the mechanics of peer review, including the value of diverse perspectives and what it means to bring my own strengths and weaknesses to this process. As an early career scholar and a woman in the field of men and masculinities, I found this facet of the mentorship program to be particularly helpful not only in building familiarity with a critical academic process, but in cultivating a sense of self-efficacy and confidence that my perspectives can offer something of value to the field.

What advice would you give to the next set of trainees in the program?

Make the most of your mentorship meetings and don’t be intimidated! Many of the richest components of this mentorship came from the conversations I had with my assigned mentors. Much of these conversations pertained to the review process itself, but multiple mentors also offered to discuss other facets of professional development and wisdom from navigating academia. Of course, everyone has limits to time and bandwidth, so I recommend reflecting a bit before your meetings on what you might like to discuss (including questions about the manuscript and the review, but also about your mentor and their professional journey) and come prepared with questions to make the most of your time.

Secondly, it can be a bit intimidating to learn a new skillset under the mentorship of highly skilled researchers—particularly because it involves the critique of other scholars’ work. It was helpful to me to remind myself that I was not expected to be an expert—and my mentors were helpful in reminding me of this as well. As I’m wrapping up my time as a mentee and positioned now to participate in the peer review process more formally, I feel that the “dumb questions” (not that those exist) and the just-give-it-your-best-shot first draft reviews were some of the most pragmatic and helpful learning opportunities of this experience. The mentors with whom I was partnered were all extremely helpful and encouraging, and my advice is to jump right in, even when you land outside your comfort zone!

How did your journey lead you to pursue research on Men & Masculinities?

Prior to beginning my PhD, my undergraduate and post-bachelor research experiences centered around implementation science in community mental health. When I began work as a volunteer on the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN) hotline, I developed a curiosity about sexual aggression research, and my academic focus shifted. Shaped both by experiences on the RAINN hotline and in my personal life, my research interests developed around the notion that a unidimensional attribution of the phenomena of men’s sexual aggression to a callous or even psychopathic character set simply did not align with the messy, complex realities that contextualize so many stories of sexual aggression.

As I began exploring the research literature around sexual aggression perpetration, I found Dr. Zoë Peterson’s work. I was particularly intrigued by a perpetration measurement study that revealed a subset of college men who seemed to unintentionally underreport their sexually aggressive behaviors. In other words, a portion of men in the study denied engaging in certain aggressive behaviors on some prominent perpetration measures, but endorsed such acts on other measures, or described them in qualitative formats. To me, these findings seemed to highlight a gap in college men’s understanding of definitions of sexual aggression and the way that those definitions may be applied to their own sexual experiences.

Since beginning my doctoral studies with Dr. Peterson, I have developed a research focus centered around understanding men’s perceptions of sexually aggressive acts across the spectrum of severity. In particular, I am interested in ambiguous encounters (i.e., sexual encounters from which the parties involved may leave with differing ideas of the encounter as violating or aggressive) and the ways in which individual and contextual factors shape men’s understanding of sexual behaviors as harmful, benign, and non/consensual. Given the considerable body of work surrounding the influence of masculinities and systems of masculine norms on men’s behavior, the realm of men and masculinities makes a natural home for this program of investigation.

What are the next steps in your development as a psychologist?

I am currently in the process of completing my qualifying exams and hope to achieve doctoral candidacy in Indiana University’s Counseling Psychology PhD in the coming months. I am in the process of conducting a scoping review of the literature exploring the role of certain affective states as a risk factors for sexual aggression perpetration, and hope to base my dissertation in this area of inquiry. Assuming all goes to plan, I will graduate with my PhD in 2027 after completing my clinical internship, and my hope is to continue to build a program of research that can contribute to a body of knowledge informing and strengthening efforts toward the primary prevention of sexual aggression.

PMM Reviewer Mentee Spotlight: Carlin Hoffacker Examines Sexual Aggression and Masculinity

Society for the Psychology of Men and Masculinities , Division 51 of the American Psychological Association.

PMM Reviewer Mentee Spotlight: Carlin Hoffacker Examines Sexual Aggression and Masculinity

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Society for the Psychology of Men and Masculinities , Division 51 of the American Psychological Association.