Preferred responses when honor is at stake: The role of cultural background, presence of others, and causality orientation

This study examined the factors that are likely to be associated with preferred behavioral and emotional responses to honor threatening situations and possible differences between a dignity culture (U.K.) and an honor culture (TR). We examined the role of cultural background, type of social setting, and participants’ causality orientation in preferred emotional and behavioral responses to honor threatening situations. We first found that Turkish participants reported significantly higher levels of negative emotional response compared to British participants in the false accusation (not humiliation) scenario and in the public (not private) setting. Second, we found that TR participants reported a higher preference for retaliatory responses than did British participants when they imagined themselves being humiliated by one of their peers. Third, autonomy-oriented participants in the Turkish sample reported significantly higher levels of negative feeling (but not higher retaliatory intentions) compared with autonomy-oriented participants in the British sample; whereas controlled-oriented participants in the Turkish sample tended to report lower levels of negative feeling compared with controlled-oriented participants in the British sample. This interaction effect suggests that controlled and autonomy orientations may serve different functions in the Turkish and British settings.