The Experimental Study of a Culture of Honor

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A program of experiments will examine the "culture of honor" reputed to exist both in the southern United States and in parts of the western United States initially settled by southerners. In cultures of honor, men are expected to defend their reputations for strength and toughness by responding forcefully, and with violence if necessary, when these are impugned. Insults and reactions to insults constitute a key social dynamic in such cultures. An unretracted insult must be punished if the target is to retain his "honor," that is, his credibility as a powerful agent who can deter more genuine threats to his well-being and livelihood. Experiments are expected to show the southerner's greater sensitivity to insults, as indicated by various measures of aggressiveness and desire to display toughness. The research is also expected to show that southerners mutually enforce standards of "honor" by withdrawing respect from the person who, when affronted, fails to do anything about it. Finally, southerners are expected to have a wider variety of means of preventing and reducing conflict, because conflict places them at more risk than it does others. Conflict avoidance techniques are only sometimes effective in preventing violence, however. The research is expected to show that, if provoked beyond a certain point, southerners will express anger later than northerners, but more explosively. Thousands of people are killed every year in the context of arguments and conflicts; and tens of thousands more are severely injured as the result of similar conflicts and as a result of spouse and child abuse. Much of this violence is the result of perceived affronts. It is important to know what sorts of situations create a sense of affront and provoke violence in different subcultures, what psychological mechanisms mediate between perceived affront and violence, what sorts of norms, sanctioned in what ways, sustain the norms allowing violence, and what social behaviors serve to avoid or reduce conflict. In addition to its theoretical and methodological contributions, this program of research will make pragmatic contributions by providing answers to the foregoing questions.