An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor

Evolutionary Psychology
human-nature.com/ep – 2005. 3: 381-391
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Original Article

An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor

Todd K. Shackelford, Florida Atlantic University, Department of Psychology, 2912 College Avenue,
Davie, Florida 33314, USA. Email: tshackel@fau.edu.

Abstract: A key element of cultures of honor is that men in these cultures are
prepared to protect with violence the reputation for strength and toughness. Such
cultures are likely to develop where (1) a man’s resources can be thieved in full by
other men and (2) the governing body is weak and thus cannot prevent or punish
theft. Historically a herding culture operating outside of formal government, the
southern United States has a rich culture of honor. In this article, I briefly review
research conducted by Nisbett, Cohen, and colleagues on the southern culture of
honor. I then present several important but unanswered questions about the
development and maintenance of the southern culture of honor. I next argue that
current models of the development and maintenance of cultures of honor and violence
can be informed by an evolutionary psychological perspective. I conclude with a
tentative evolutionary psychological analysis of the development and maintenance of
the southern culture of honor.

Keywords: Evolutionary Psychology, Culture of Honor, Reputation.

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Introduction

Respect.
Walk.


Are you talking to me?


Run your mouth when I’m not around, it’s easy to achieve.


You cry to weak friends that sympathize.


Can you hear the violins playing your song?


Those same friends tell me your every word.
Respect.
Walk.


Are you talking to me?
No
way,
punk.
Walk on home, boy.

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An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor
Partial lyrics to “Walk,” recorded by Pantera, heavy metal band based
in Dallas, Texas



Now a new look in my eyes.
My
spirits
rise.
Forget
the
past.
Present
tense
works
and
lasts.


Got shit on, pissed on, spit on, stepped on, fucked with,


Pointed at by lesser men.


New life in place of old life.
Unscarred
by
trials.


A new level of confidence and power.
No
fucking
surrender.
Can’t
lose.

Partial lyrics to “A New Level,” also recorded by Pantera

The lyrics quoted above—drawn from songs recorded by a Texas-based music
group—illustrate the culture of honor that characterizes the southern United States,
according to Nisbett, Cohen, and their colleagues (e.g., Cohen, 1996, 1998; Cohen
and Nisbett, 1994, 1997; Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, and Schwartz, 1996; Cohen,
Vandello, Puente, and Rantilla, 1999; Nisbett, 1993; Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). The
lyrics to the first song, “Walk,” make clear to an unnamed source that if he knows
what’s best for him, he’ll respect the greater strength and power of the speaker and
not issue any challenges. Better to just walk right on by, minding his own business.
Furthermore, the unnamed source best not derogate the speaker, for he’ll find out.
And you can bet he’ll be out to answer the affront.
The lyrics to the second song, “A New Level,” focus specifically on the
importance of repairing reputational damage. The speaker’s reputation apparently has
been maligned frequently in the past. More reputationally damaging still, this
disrespect has been issued by “lesser men.” But beware those who think they might
now challenge the speaker, for he has “a new level of confidence and power.” He
“can’t lose.” One might do well to avoid insulting the speaker, for it does seem that
he’s willing to inflict immediate and severe punishment on those who would
challenge his strength and toughness.
The southern United States is not the only stronghold for a culture of honor.
Cultures of honor have been documented throughout the world (see Daly and Wilson,
1988; Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). According to Nisbett and colleagues (e.g., Cohen,
1996; Cohen and Nisbett, 1994; Cohen et al., 1996; Nisbett, 1993; Nisbett and Cohen,
1996), a key element of a culture of honor is that the participant in such a culture is
prepared to protect with violence his reputation for strength and toughness. Such
cultures are particularly likely to develop where (1) a man’s resource holdings can be
thieved in full by other men and (2) the governing body is weak or nonexistent and
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An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor
thus cannot prevent or punish theft. These two conditions can occur together:
Herding, for example, can be the primary viable form of agriculture in remote areas,
far from government enforcement mechanisms.
The southern United States was settled by herdsmen from Scotland and
Ireland. The northern United States, in contrast, was settled by farmers from England,
Holland, and Germany (Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). Herding, more than farming,
places an individual at risk for losing his entire resource base to theft. Additionally,
the South was a low-population frontier region well into the 19th century. In frontier
regions, the state has little power to command compliance with the law, and the
residents must create and enforce their own system of order. According to Nisbett and
colleagues (e.g., Nisbett and Cohen, 1996), a system of order that commonly
develops under these circumstances is defined by “the rule of retaliation”: If you
cross me, I will punish you.
According to Nisbett and Cohen (1996, p. xv), “to maintain credible power of
deterrence, the individual must project a stance of willingness to commit mayhem and
to risk wounds or death for himself.” He therefore must be unwaveringly vigilant for
affronts that could be construed by others as disrespect. In a culture of honor, when
someone allows himself to be insulted or disrespected, he gives the impression that he
lacks the strength to protect what is his. With little or no formal government presence
to punish selfish behavior—including massive theft of property that could destroy a
herdsman economically—the individual must respond with violence or the threat of
violence to any affront.
Most of the previous work by Nisbett and colleagues has focused exclusively
on men, as men in the South (and in all cultures of honor) have been, and continue to
be, the primary family breadwinners. Nisbett and colleagues have speculated that
women may play a role in perpetuating the southern culture of honor. These
speculations are presented later in this article. Presently, this article follows Nisbett
and colleagues’ focus on men as the primary actors in a culture of honor.
Furthermore, according to Nisbett and colleagues, non-white men are not expected to
participate in the southern culture of honor, which demands past participation in the
earlier herding economy of this region. For much of the history of the South, for
example, blacks were enslaved by white landowners, and thus were not active
participants in the herding economy. Nisbett and colleagues tested many of their
hypotheses about the southern culture of honor for southern black men and for
southern white men, independently. They found, as hypothesized, evidence of a
culture of honor among southern whites but not northern whites, but no regional
differences among blacks.
The remainder of this article has three goals. First, I briefly review some of
the research conducted by Nisbett, Cohen, and their colleagues on the southern
culture of honor. Second, I present several important but unanswered questions about
the development and maintenance of the southern culture of honor. Third, I argue that
current models of the development and maintenance of cultures of honor and violence
can be informed by an evolutionary psychological perspective (e.g., Buss, 1995;
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An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective on Cultures of Honor
Goetz and Shackelford, in press; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992). The article closes with
a tentative and speculative evolutionary psychological analysis of the development
and maintenance of the southern culture of honor.

Review of Some Previous Empirical Work

Nisbett (1993): Homicide rates. The homicide rate is significantly higher for
white male southerners than for white male northerners, but only for argument-related
homicides (e.g., trivial altercations). These homicides follow insults that center on
reputation, strength, toughness, and honor. An increased concern with maintaining or
repairing a reputation for strength, toughness, and honor following insult accounts for
the higher rate of homicide among southern white men relative to northern white
men, over and above North-South differences in temperature, poverty, and the
historical practice of slavery.
Cohen and Nisbett (1994): National attitudinal surveys. In survey studies
conducted over the last three decades, white southern men do not generally endorse
violence more than do white northern men. Instead, southerners’ increased
endorsement of violence is limited to responses to insults or threats that challenge
one’s strength, toughness, or honor.
Cohen, Nisbett, Bowdle, and Schwartz (1996): Experiments and
psychophysiological assays. The findings of three experiments bridged the gap
between the survey data showing that white southern men are more accepting of
violence in response to an insult and the archival data showing that argument-related
homicide rates are higher in the South than in the North, among white men. Cohen et
al. (1996) conducted experiments in which the participant was insulted either in the
presence of observers or in the absence of observers. The insult took the form of
being physically pushed while being called an “asshole.”
Cohen et al. (1996) documented that insulted white southern men, relative to
non-insulted white southern men and insulted and non-insulted white northern men
(1) more strongly believed that the insult damaged their appearance of strength and
toughness in the eyes of an observer; (2) were made more upset by the insult, as
indicated by their rise in cortisol levels and the pattern of emotional responses they
displayed as rated by observers; (3) became more cognitively primed for future
aggression in insult situations, as indicated by their violent completions of a vignette
in which they were asked to indicate how one man should respond when another man
is attempting to kiss his long-term partner at a crowded party; (4) showed
physiological preparedness for dominant and aggressive behaviors, as indicated by a
rise in testosterone levels; (5) behaved in more domineering ways (e.g., gave a firmer
handshake) during interpersonal encounters with male observers of the insult; and (6)
behaved in physically aggressive ways in subsequent challenge situations, as
indicated by a greater willingness to stay put in a narrow hallway as a 6 foot, 3 inch,
250 lb. confederate barreled toward them on a certain collision course.
Cohen (1996): Law, social policy, and violence. A variety of laws,
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institutions, and social policies requiring the participation of many people in a
“shared meaning system” are consistent with the culture-of-honor characterization of
the South. Relative to the non-South (especially the North), the South is characterized
by (1) opposition to gun control; (2) preference for laws allowing for violence in
protection of self, family, and property; (3) preference for a strong national defense;
(4) preference for the institutional use of violence in socializing children; and (5)
willingness to carry out capital punishment and other forms of state violence for
preventing crime and maintaining social order.
Nisbett and Cohen (1996): Women’s participation in the culture of honor.
Like their male counterparts, white female southerners, more than white female
northerners, hold attitudes consistent with a culture of honor: They oppose gun
control; endorse violence for the protection of self, family, and property; favor a
strong national defense; and endorse parental and school spanking of children.
Nisbett and Cohen (1996) provide anecdotal evidence that white southern
women play an important role in socializing their sons (but not their daughters) to be
vigilant and immediately responsive to insult or affront. Nisbett and Cohen report
that, in the experiments conducted by Cohen et al. (1996), having a mother from the
South was a good predictor of a “southern” response to insult and, in fact, was a
better predictor of a “southern” response to insult than was having a father from the
South.
A final piece of information presented by Nisbett and Cohen (1996) that is
relevant to women’s participation in the southern culture of honor is that female
members of the U.S. House of Representatives from the South are more likely to
advocate a strong military and to oppose gun control than are their female
counterparts from the North.
To summarize, Nisbett and Cohen (1996) speculate that women’s
participation in the southern culture of honor may be primarily as socializing agents,
intent on teaching their sons to respond swiftly and violently to affronts, insults, and
disrespect. Nisbett and Cohen are careful to point out, however, that much research
remains to be conducted before women’s participation in the southern culture of
honor can be known with any certainty.

Lingering Questions

Nisbett, Cohen, and colleagues have amassed a good deal of data supporting
their hypotheses about the development and expression of a culture of honor among
white southern men. This program of research is impressive in its use of multiple
methodologies the results of which provide convergent support for the core
hypotheses. Several important questions about Nisbett and colleagues’ account of the
southern culture of honor remain to be answered, however. Three lingering questions
are addressed below.


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What is the nature of the psychology underlying a culture of honor?

Nisbett and colleagues provide wide-ranging empirical support for their
account of the southern culture of honor and violence displayed by white southern
men. What this account does not provide, however, is a clear description of the
psychological mechanisms that underpin the behavioral manifestations that define the
culture of honor. Key questions include: What is the nature of the psychological
mechanisms that underlie the culture of honor? What are the design features of these
mechanisms?
An evolutionary psychological perspective (Buss, 1995; Tooby and Cosmides,
1992; and see below) may provide a profitable framework for addressing these
questions. What specific adaptive problems might the mechanisms underlying the
manifest culture of honor have been selected to solve? According to Nisbett and
colleagues, the southern culture of honor developed in response to the herding
economy of the South, in the context of a relative absence of governmental power to
prevent or punish theft of property. However, such a herding culture characterized the
South for only a few hundred years and, indeed, no longer accurately describes the
primary economy of the South. Even under strong selection pressures, a few hundred
years is far too little time for complex psychological mechanisms to have been
designed specifically in response to the problem of deterring would-be thieves from
ransacking one’s herd. It is more likely that the psychological mechanisms underlying
the behavioral manifestations of the southern culture of honor were selected as a
solution to some other, perhaps closely related, adaptive problem. This possibility is
addressed below, in the section “Additional Evolutionary Psychological Speculations
on Cultures of Honor.”
What Nisbett and colleagues have provided is a description of some of the key
inputs that are processed by the evolved psychological mechanisms that motivate
actions characteristic of the southern culture of honor. Socioeconomic inputs
identified by Nisbett and colleagues include, for example, participation in a herding
economy in relative isolation from governmental regulation and punishment of
property theft. These inputs are processed by psychological mechanisms that then
produce specific outputs, several of which also have been described by Nisbett and
colleagues. One set of outputs produced by the operation of these mechanisms
appears to be increased vigilance for insults, affronts, or challenges to one’s ability to
thwart and subsequently punish those who would attempt to steal one’s property. A
related output is violence inflicted as a response to these perceived insults or affronts.
The psychological mechanisms underlying the culture of honor appear to be
universal among men, under conditions of economic vulnerability and in the absence
of a formal legal code that punishes theft of property. Nisbett and Cohen (1996; and
see Daly and Wilson, 1988) document a variety of cultures around the world in which
the men behave remarkably similar to white southern men in their quick, certain, and
often violent response to an insult or challenge to their strength and toughness. The
apparent universality of cultures of honor (under the necessary conditions) lends
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support to the argument that the behavioral manifestations of cultures of honor may
be underpinned by universal (albeit sex-specific) evolved psychological mechanisms.
Nisbett and Cohen (1996) do not address the cross-cultural prevalence of a
culture of honor among women. Nisbett and Cohen do provide some data (see above)
consistent with the possibility that white southern women participate to some extent
in what appears to be a male-driven culture of honor. One speculation is that to the
extent that women do participate in a culture of honor—including the southern
culture of honor—they may be doing so largely at the urging of, or in response to, the
workings of the male mind. Thus, female psychology may not include the
psychological mechanisms that underlie the male expression of a culture of honor.
Instead, female psychology might include evolved psychological mechanisms for
attending to the means by which male psychology regulates status, strength,
toughness, and honor disputes. Nisbett and Cohen provide anecdotal evidence, for
example, that southern white women play an important part in socializing sons (but
not daughters) to be attentive to insults and affronts, and to respond with retributive
violence when an insult or affront is detected. As Nisbett and colleagues clearly
indicate, however, much research remains to be conducted on women’s role in the
development and maintenance of cultures of honor.

How is the southern culture of honor maintained, given that the South is no longer
based primarily on a herding economy?

A troubling question for the account offered by Nisbett and colleagues is how
and why the southern culture of honor has persisted to the present day (as it clearly
has). This is troubling because the white South no longer relies primarily (or even in
substantial part) on a herding economy. Why do white southern men, more than white
northern men, continue to respond with violence to a perceived insult or affront when
(a) they no longer risk massive economic loss due to theft, and (b) there now exist
formal city, county, state and federal legislative bodies to punish theft or attempted
theft of property? Nisbett and colleagues offer two general explanations for the
persistence of a culture of honor among present-day, southern white men.
First, Nisbett and colleagues suggest that a culture of honor persists among
white southern men because this culture has achieved a degree of “functional
autonomy.” Simply stated, the culture of honor has “acquired a life of its own,” and
no longer requires the herding economy or the absence of government for its
persistence. This “explanation,” however, amounts to a redescription of the
persistence phenomenon, and begs the question of why the culture of honor has
“acquired a life of its own.” Recent work by Cohen, Nisbett, and colleagues has
begun to unpack the persistence phenomenon, with a focus on identifying the social
mechanisms that might help to account for the persistence of a culture of honor,
including, for example, patterns of interpersonal interaction that lead to explosions of
violence (Cohen et al., 1999), collective representations that condone violence, such
as laws (Cohen, 1996) and media representations (Cohen and Nisbett, 1997), and
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institutional non-stigmatization of violence (Cohen and Nisbett, 1997).
Nisbett and colleagues offer a second speculation for the persistence of the
southern culture of honor. Perhaps the persistence of the culture of honor is
attributable to “pluralistic ignorance”: everybody believes that if they do not respond
to an insult with violence, then their reputation for toughness and honor will suffer.
No one questions this belief, when indeed it may be false. This argument is plausible,
but leaves unanswered the question of why white southern men are vulnerable to this
“pluralistic ignorance.” What is the nature of the psychological mechanisms that
underlie this phenomenon? Here is another area that can benefit from additional
research, perhaps informed by an evolutionary psychological perspective. What
adaptive problems, for example, might have selected for psychological mechanisms
that motivate participation in the “pluralistic ignorance” suggested by Nisbett and
colleagues?

Why don’t public insults elicit more violence than is elicited by private insults?

Cohen et al. (1996) do not find greater endorsement of violence as a response
to public insults relative to private insults, as the culture of honor hypothesis predicts.
Cohen et al. suggest that this is due to poor operationalization of the public insult
condition. It would have been more appropriate, they argue, to have enlisted insult
observers that are acquaintances, family members, rivals, or potential mates. In their
experiments, strangers with whom the participants were not likely to interact again
witnessed the insult, hence we might expect less attempt at reputation maintenance by
responding aggressively to an insult.
An evolutionary psychological perspective suggests, however, that this
experimental paradigm may represent an evolutionarily novel situation. In the human
ancestral past, observers to insults were likely to have been members of one’s
community and, hence, to have been potential rivals or to have communicated the
observed insult to potential rivals. Thus, strangers in the experiments conducted by
Cohen et al. (1996) may have been registered by the evolved psychological
mechanisms of the participants as relatively unknown local group members. If the
observers were perceived as local group members rather than as strangers with whom
the participant would not interact again, then it is expected that the participants would
have responded with increased aggressiveness to insults issued in the public
conditions relative to insults issued in the private conditions.
In summary, it is not yet clear why greater aggression or readiness for
aggression was not displayed in the public insult conditions relative to the private
insult conditions. The strangers to the participant may or may not have been
registered as strangers by the psychological mechanisms that evolved in social
environments in which observers were likely to have been members of one’s local
community.


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Additional Evolutionary Psychological Speculations on Cultures of Honor

Nisbett and colleagues explicitly recognize the potential utility of an
evolutionary psychological perspective for understanding cultures of honor, but do
not provide any systematic discussion of the relevance of evolutionary psychology.
The remainder of this article presents evolutionary psychological speculations about
cultures of honor, in general, and about the white southern male culture of honor, in
particular.
All men may have the psychological mechanisms for responding to insult to
maintain or repair a reputation for strength, toughness, and honor. These mechanisms
might be called evolved reputation maintenance mechanisms. These mechanisms
should be sensitive to context. One context to which the mechanisms underlying
reputation maintenance should be sensitive is the local economy, as an index of the
vulnerability of resources to mass theft.
In economies such as herding that make one vulnerable to large-scale loss of
resources to theft, these reputation maintenance mechanisms might be particularly
attuned to insults and affronts. Alternatively, the threshold for responding with
violence to insults and affronts may be lower in the context of economies that make
individuals vulnerable to large-scale loss due to theft. Vigorous and violent
retribution for an affront may successfully dissuade future transgressions.
According to this account, a culture of honor might describe the collective
lowering of individual men’s thresholds for responding to insults with violence. Men
in the South and men in the North share the evolved psychological mechanisms
underlying reputation maintenance. In principle, if southern men instead grew up in
the North, they would not endorse beliefs and behaviors consistent with a culture of
honor. Conversely, if northern men grew up in the South, they would more
vigorously endorse these beliefs and behaviors, much as southern white men do
today.
A key point is that, according to this account, both northern men and southern
men have the capacity to respond with violence to an insult or affront. Nisbett and
colleagues’ own data support this claim. Southern men are only relatively more likely
than are northern men to (a) respond to affronts with violence, (b) support the use of
using violence to redress an affront, (c) support corporal punishment, (d) support
capital punishment, (e) support fewer gun control regulations, and so on.
All men—those residing in the southern or northern United States, and those
residing in every other society in the world—may have the psychological
mechanisms that underlie the behavioral manifestations that Nisbett and colleagues
characterize as a culture of honor. What is required for the manifestation of the
behavioral characteristics of a culture of honor is a certain set of input conditions that
are processed by these psychological mechanisms. The psychological mechanisms
then produce a set of behavioral, emotional, and cognitive outputs that are defined as
the manifest indicators of a culture of honor.
The psychological mechanisms that provide output consistent with a culture
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of honor are not likely to have evolved as specific solutions to adaptive problems
confronted by ancestral men in economically vulnerable economies lacking a formal
legislative presence. This is because herding economies and other economies in
which wealth is stockpiled are evolutionarily recent phenomena.
The psychological mechanisms may have evolved, however, as solutions to a
related adaptive problem that likely was recurrently confronted by ancestral men:
theft of a reproductively valuable wife. Theft of a wife might have amounted not to
physical theft, per se, but to theft of her reproductive capacity, as in the form of
courting her for an extra-pair copulation or raping her. The manifest behaviors
defined as indicators of a culture of honor might be the output of psychological
mechanisms that evolved in response to the adaptive problem of mate retention (see,
e.g., Buss, 1988; Buss and Shackelford, 1997; Flinn, 1988; Shackelford, Goetz, Buss,
Euler, and Hoier, 2005).
Following this argument, it would be interesting to document, for example,
whether rates of wifely infidelity are higher in the South than in the North. Why
wifely infidelity rates might be higher in the South than in the North is a separate
question. Nisbett and colleagues have documented that white southern men endorse
violence as a means of mate retention more than do white northern men. This finding
is consistent with the present speculation that the mechanisms of mate retention may
be recruited in displaying behaviors consistent with a culture of honor. If manifest
behavioral indicators of a culture of honor are the output of evolved psychological
mate retention mechanisms, then to the extent that wifely infidelity rates remain
higher in the southern United States than elsewhere in the nation, this may help to
account for the persistence of a culture of honor to the present. In addition to the
social mechanisms identified in recent research [e.g., collective representations that
condone violence, such as laws (Cohen, 1996) and media representations (Cohen and
Nisbett, 1997), and institutional non-stigmatization of violence (Cohen and Nisbett,
1997)], regional differences in recent wifely infidelity rates might help to account for
the persistence of the southern culture of honor to the present.

Acknowledgment: The author is grateful to an anonymous reviewer for many helpful
comments and suggestions that improved this article.

Received 1 July, 2005, Revision received 4 October, 2005, Accepted 17 October,
2005.

References

Buss, D. M. (1988). From vigilance to violence: Tactics of mate retention among
American undergraduates. Ethology and Sociobiology, 9, 191-317.
Buss, D. M. (1995). Evolutionary psychology: A new paradigm for psychological
science. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 1-30.
Cohen, D. (1996). Law, social policy, and violence: The impact of regional cultures.
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Document Outline

• Evolutionary Psychology
  • • Review of Some Previous Empirical Work
    • Lingering Questions

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