Costly morality theory of honor: An evolutionary, culture-as-situated-cognition perspective

Honor is universally comprehensible, though it varies regionally in frequency, chronicity, andintensity, and looks different at each time and place. We use culture-as-situated-cognition theory(CSCT), an integrating situated social cognition account of culture, to understand why. Humanculture addresses recurrent problems; how frequently, chronically, and intensely each comes tomind depends on their ecological niche; the practices addressing them vary in time and place.We articulate the Costly Morality Theory of Honor (CMTH) within CSCT to distinguish honorfrom related constructs by theorizing two axes (morality-immorality, costly-cost-free) at each ofCSCT’s three levels. In our formulation, honor is costly morality, resolving the recurrentproblem of regulating relationships through costly signals of trustworthiness (human-universal).Societies embedded in harsher ecological niches require more cost to find a signal to be honestand focus on particular relational aspects of morality (niche-linked). Honor specifies how to be aperson in the world (time-and-place-specific).