A price to pay: Turkish and American retaliation for threats to personal and family honor

Two studies investigated retaliatory responses to actual honor threats among members of an honor culture (Turkey) and a dignity culture (northern U.S.). The honor threat in these studies was based on previous research which has shown that honesty is a key element of the conception of honor and that accusations of dishonesty are threatening to one’s honor. In both studies, participants wrote an essay describing the role of honesty in their lives and received feedback on their essay accusing them of being dishonest (vs. neutral feedback). Turkish participants retaliated more strongly than did northern U.S. participants against the person who challenged their honesty by assigning him/her to solve more difficult tangrams over easy ones (Study 1) and by choosing sensory tasks of a higher level of intensity to complete (Study 2). Study 2 added a relational honor condition, in which participants wrote about honesty in their parents’ lives and examined the role of individual differences in honor values in retaliation. Endorsement of honor values predicted retaliation among Turkish participants in both the personal and relational honor conditions, but not among northern U.S. participants

Culture-level dimensions of social axioms and their correlates across 41 cultures

Leung and colleagues have revealed a five-dimensional structure of social axioms across individuals from five cultural groups. The present research was designed to reveal the culture level factor structure of social axioms and its correlates across 41 nations. An ecological factor analysis on the 60 items of the Social Axioms Survey extracted two factors: Dynamic Externality correlates with value measures tapping collectivism, hierarchy, and conservatism and with national indices indicative of lower social development. Societal Cynicism is less strongly and broadly correlated with previous values measures or other national indices and seems to define a novel cultural syndrome. Its national correlates suggest that it taps the cognitive component of a cultural constellation labeled maleficence, a cultural syndrome associated with a general mistrust of social systems and other people. Discussion focused on the meaning of these national level factors of beliefs and on their relationships with individual level factors of belief derived from the same data set.(undefined

Confrontation vs. withdrawal: Cultural differences in responses to threats to honor

This study compares evaluations by members of an honor culture (Turkey) and a dignity culture (northern US) of honor threat scenarios, in which a target was the victim of either a rude affront or a false accusation, and the target chose to withdraw or confront the attacker. Turkish participants were more likely than American participants to evaluate positively the person who withdrew from the rude affront and the person who confronted the false accusation. Participants in both societies perceived that others in their society would endorse confrontation more than withdrawal in both types of scenarios, but this effect was larger for Turkish than American participants. Endorsement of honor values positively predicted evaluations of the targets most strongly among Turkish participants who read about a person who confronted their attacker. These findings provide insight into the role of cultural norms and individual differences in the ways honor influences behavior

Emotional responses to honor situations in Turkey and the northern USA

The main goal of the current research is to investigate emotional reactions to situations that implicate honor in Turkish and northern American cultural groups. In Studies 1a and 1b, participants rated the degree to which a variety of events fit their prototypes for honor-related situations. Both Turkish and American participants evaluated situations generated by their co-nationals as most central to their prototypes of honor-related situations. Study 2 examined emotional responses to Turkish or U.S.-generated situations that varied in centrality to the prototype. Highly central situations and Turkish-generated situations elicited stronger emotions than less central situations and U.S.-generated situations. Americans reported higher levels of positive emotions in response to honor-enhancing situations than did Turkish participants. These findings demonstrate that the prototypes of honor relevant situations differ for Turkish and northern American people, and that Turkish honor relevant situations are more emotion-laden than are northern American honor relevant situations

Mapping expressive differences around the world : the relationship between emotional display rules and individualism versus collectivism

Despite the importance of the concept of cultural display rules in explaining cultural differences in emo- tional expression and despite the fact that it has been more than 30 years since this concept was coined, there is yet to be a study that surveys display rules across a wide range of cultures. This article reports such a study. More than 5,000 respondents in 32 countries completed the Display Rule Assessment Inventory. The authors examined five hypotheses concerning the relationship between display rules and individualism-collectivism (IC). The findings indicated the existence of several universal effects, includ- ing greater expression toward in-groups versus out-groups, and an overall regulation effect. Individualistic and collectivistic cultures differed on overall expressivity endorsement and in norms concerning specific emotions in in-group and out-group situations