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

Abstract

This study examined the factors that are likely to be associated with preferred behavioural and emotional responses to honour-threatening situations and possible differences between a dignity culture (United Kingdom) and an honour culture (Turkey). We examined the role of cultural background, type of social setting, and participants' causality orientation in preferred emotional and behavioural responses to honour-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 Turkish 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.