A new paper on the prevalence of honor values in the Mediterranean authored by Assistant Professor Alexander Kirchner-Häusler and Professor Yukiko Uchida has been published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Mediterranean societies are commonly labelled as “cultures of honor” in contrast with presumed “dignity” and “face” cultures of Anglo-Western and East Asian societies, but empirical investigations into the validity of these labels have been scarce. In the current study, the authors tested this categorization in two large-scale surveys with more than 11 societies from Mediterranean, East Asian, and Anglo-Western regions. The results suggest that a cultural logic of honor plays a role in some, but not all Mediterranean societies, and that collectively labeling these societies as “honor cultures” may therefore be oversimplistic. Furthermore, a methodological comparison showed that asking participants for their perceptions of values in their society may offer some benefits over asking for personal endorsement when studying cultural values.

Read more in the original article:

Vignoles, V. L., Kirchner-Häusler, A., Uskul, A. K., Cross, S. E., Rodriguez-Bailón, R., Bossom, I. R. L., Castillo, V. A., Gezici-Yalçın, M., Harb, C., Ishii, K., Karamaouna, P., Kafetsios, K., Kateri, E., Matamoros-Lima, J., Miniesy, R., Na, J., Özkan, Z., Pagliaro, S., Psaltis, C., … Wohl, M. J. A. (2025). Are Mediterranean Societies “Cultures of Honor?”: Prevalence and Implications of a Cultural Logic of Honor Across Three World Regions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672241295500