Testing Honor Concern's Distinctiveness and Sensitivity to Honor Threats

Honor concern is an ideology describing the amount an individual views their reputation as their self-worth and community standing. Honor concern describes what is honorable in general (moral honor concern), for men (masculine honor concern), women (feminine honor concern), and groups (group honor concern). Theory states that people higher in honor concern feel that they must maintain their state honor, including responding to honor threats to mitigate the loss of state honor or restore any potential lost state honor. Such responses can include blaming victims or being aggressive to partners. Previous research has not fully tested claims that honor concern is distinct from other ideologies, that those higher in honor concern are uniquely sensitive to honor threats, or the theorized maintenance process in which people seek to restore state honor in the face of honor threats. This thesis examines the distinct aspects of honor concern and examines an honor maintenance process in a series of studies. Chapter 2 results suggest that group honor concern, compared with masculine or feminine honor concern, is the most distinct from right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation and uniquely predicts patriotism and trait aggression (Meta-analysis, k = 16, n = 5,053; Study 2, n = 298). Chapter 3 examined sensitivity to honor threats (i.e., those higher in honor concern should be vigilant for and respond to state honor threatening situations to prevent losing state honor), by testing if following an honor threat those higher in honor concern victim blamed more (to restore lost state honor; total n = 479). Although four experiments indicated people generally attributed relatively more blame to victims of assault in the condition of an infidelity-related honor threat, there was no evidence that people higher in honor concern were more sensitive to the honor threat. Finally, a dyadic study tested the extent to which romantic couples responded to an honor threat targeting one couple member. However, mixed evidence for a proposed honor maintenance model emerged: partners of those whose state honor had been threatened responded more to honor threats than the targets of the honor threat (Chapter 4; Study 1, n = 100 dyads). This thesis suggests that honor concern is a distinct ideology that predicts individuals’ sensitivity to certain, but not all, honor threats. More theoretical work is needed to elucidate the nuances of honor concern, such as clarifying which threats those higher in honor concern are sensitive to and if honor threats differ for culture versus individual honor concern.