Implications of culture of honor theory and research for practitioners and prevention researchers.

Since the seminal publication of Nisbett and Cohen in 1996 linking the higher rates of violence in the Southern United States compared with the Northern United States to a "culture of honor," researchers have paid increasing attention to conceptualizing honor and identifying its underlying psychological mechanisms and its behavioral outcomes. The concern for reputation and other values embedded in culture of honor act as potential sociocultural risk factors for several major social problems in the United States. The aim of this article is to review the recent research on culture of honor and to discuss its societal implications by focusing on 3 pressing social problems: intimate partner aggression, school violence, and reluctance to seek mental health care. Relative to Whites in northern states, White populations in the southern and western states (considered to have cultures of honor) have higher levels of intimate partner violence, more school shootings, and are less likely to seek mental health care. We also briefly review the incidence of these issues among American Latinx groups, another culture of honor. We suggest ways that the scientific findings on culture of honor can enhance prevention and intervention efforts in education, health, and mental health care settings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Culture moderates children's responses to ostracism situations.

Across a series of studies, we investigated cultural differences in children's responses to ostracism situations. Working with the children of farmers and herders, we focused on how painful children estimate ostracism to be. Study 1a showed that 4- to 8-year-old children from a socially interdependent farming community estimated ostracism to be less painful than did children from an independent herding community. Study 1b showed that this cultural difference was specific to social pain and did not apply to physical pain. Study 2 replicated the results of Study 1a and showed that individual differences in parents' level of social interdependence mediated the relationship between cultural group and how painful children estimate ostracism to be. Study 3 replicated this effect again and showed that children's tendency to recommend seeking social support following ostracism mediated the relationship between cultural group and the perceived pain of being excluded. Finally, Study 4 investigated cultural differences in moral responses to ostracism and showed that children from the farming community punished an individual who ostracized someone else less harshly than did children from the independent herding community. Thus different economic cultures are associated with striking differences in social interdependence and responses to ostracism from early in development. (PsycINFO Database Record

A price to pay: Turkish and Northern 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 United States). 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 significantly predicted retaliation among Turkish participants in the relational honor attack condition, but not among northern U.S. participants.

Visualisation for increasing health intentions: enhanced effects following a health message and when using a first-person perspective.

The present research explored whether visualising engaging in a health behaviour resulted in increased intentions to engage in that behaviour, when combined with an informational health message. Further, the effects of the visual perspective (first-person vs. third-person) used to visualise the health behaviour were explored. In an online questionnaire study employing a 2 × 3 between-participants experimental design, participants (N = 532) read vs. did not read an informational health message about the benefits of increasing fruit consumption, then visualised (from first-person vs. third-person perspective) vs. did not visualise themselves increasing their fruit consumption. Intentions to increase fruit consumption were assessed, as were potential mediating variables. The results indicated that visualisation (irrespective of perspective) did not result in increased intentions when it was not combined with the health message. However, when participants had read the health message, visualisation resulted in significantly stronger intentions, and the first-person perspective was significantly more effective than the third-person perspective. The beneficial effect of visualisation, and the first-person perspective, on intentions was mediated by increased self-efficacy and action planning. Findings are discussed in relation to existing research on visualisation and perspective, and in terms of practical applications for health promotion efforts.