The social and cultural psychology of honour: What have we learned from researching honour in Turkey?

A growing literature in social and cultural psychology has examined cultures of honour primarily focusing on southern states in the United States and on Mediterranean countries of southern Europe. In this article, we review a programme of research that has extended theories of cultures of honour to an under-researched context: Turkey. We first describe research that assessed lay reports of the situations that enhance or attack a person’s honour and lay prototypes of honour. Next, we review research that built on this foundation and examined emotional implications, actual retaliatory responses, and preferences for different types of actions (e.g., attack vs. withdrawal) in the face of honour threats. We then briefly comment on our current research focused on the ways that honour threats can impede goal pursuit, on the distinction between different types of honour threats, and on acculturation processes in immigrant groups from cultures of honour. We conclude by highlighting the contributions of this programme of research to the literature on cultures of honour and discuss future directions.