Contrary to the hypotheses, stressful social experiences in childhood and adolescence were not associated with drive for muscularity, although a significant small positive correlation was found. These results are inconsistent with other findings (Nowell and Ricciardelli, 2008; Schaefer and Salafia, 2014). Thus, the assumption that men taking up intense exercise do so in order to make up for earlier stressful experience (Wolke and Sapouna, 2008) and use weight training as a coping strategy (Boyda and Shevlin, 2011) can be questioned.