Emotional responses to honour situations in Turkey and the northern USA

Abstract

The main goal of the current research is to investigate emotional reactions to situations that implicate honour in Turkish and northern American cultural groups. In Studies 1A and 1B, participants rated the degree to which a variety of events fit their prototypes for honour-related situations. Both Turkish and American participants evaluated situations generated by their co-nationals as most central to their prototypes of honour-related situations. Study 2 examined emotional responses to Turkish or US-generated situations that varied in centrality to the prototype. Highly central situations and Turkish-generated situations elicited stronger emotions than less central situations and US-generated situations. Americans reported higher levels of positive emotions in response to honour-enhancing situations than did Turkish participants. These findings demonstrate that the prototypes of honour relevant situations differ for Turkish and northern American people, and that Turkish honour relevant situations are more emotion-laden than are northern American honour relevant situations.

Keywords:

• Honour
• Situations
• Emotions
• Turkey
• Northern USA

Notes

¹ Two synonymous terms, “onur” and “şeref” were used as Turkish translations of the English term “honour,” and these terms closely correspond to the North American understanding of honour (see Sev'er & Yurdakul, 2001).

² Mean centrality ratings (and SDs) for all Turkish and US situations are available from the authors upon request.

³ A comparison of the mean centrality ratings with the frequencies from Uskul et al. (2012) showed that some situations that were listed frequently also received high centrality ratings (e.g., attack: blaming a person with something she/he didn't do). However, other frequently listed situations (e.g., attack: making fun of a person) were given low centrality ratings. This pattern resulted in a marginally significant positive correlation for honour-attacking situations (r _attack = .21, p = .08) and a non-significant positive correlation between centrality ratings and frequencies for honour-enhancing situations (r _enhance = .17, ns). This finding suggests that among the Turkish participants there is a somewhat stronger consensus for honour-attacking situations than for honour-enhancing situations.

⁴ A comparison of the mean centrality ratings with the frequencies from Uskul et al. (2012) showed that some situations that were listed frequently also received high centrality ratings (e.g., disrespecting and attacking what the person believes in). However, other frequently listed situations (e.g., calling the person names) were given low centrality ratings. This pattern resulted in non-significant correlations between centrality ratings and frequencies for honour-attacking (r _attack = .07, ns) and honour-enhancing situations (r _enhance = .19, ns).

⁵ Following reviewers' suggestion study 1B was conducted after the completion of data collection for Studies 1A and 2.

⁶ The list of honour-attacking and honour-enhancing situations used in this study is available from the authors upon request.

⁷ Although we call the situations from the lower section of the centrality ranking the least central situations, an examination of the means of situations in this section suggests that they were ranked moderate in centrality.

⁸ In this study, we also asked participants to report on how they think the situations would affect their self-esteem. Here we do not report findings for self-esteem to keep the focus on emotions.

⁹ Women may have internalised the widespread societal expectations that they should be examples of good (and honourable) behaviour; consequently, imagining themselves in situations that may lead them to lose honour (and subsequently reputation and respect) may be associated with more negative emotions. Moreover, failing to behave honourably may lead to greater penalties for women than for men (e.g., Mojab & Abdo, 2004).

¹⁰ Due to an oversight, two Turkish-generated peripheral situations were not included in Study 1B and were not part of the averaged centrality rating for this category of situations. All other situations were included.

¹¹ We conducted a separate mixed ANOVA with type of situation as a within-subjects variable with four levels (TR-generated highly vs. less central situations vs. US-generated highly vs. less central situations) and cultural group and gender as between-subjects variables. We examined whether Turkish participants' similar emotional responses to the highly central and less central US-generated situations might be due to similar centrality ratings given to these situations. The analysis did not provide support for this possibility; Turkish participants rated highly central US situations as more central than less central US situations, p < .001, d = .97.

¹² There was a significant interaction between gender, origin and centrality of the situations, F (1, 170) = 5.47, p = .02. Women reported more positive emotions than men for highly central situations originating in Turkey and for low centrality situations originating from the USA. Their responses were similar to men's for the other types of situations.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant [# 0646360] awarded to Susan Cross (PI) and Ayse K. Uskul (co-PI).