Shared Burdens, Personal Costs on the Emotional and Social Consequences of Family Honor

We present two studies on the consequences of threats to family honor. In Study 1, 99 Pakistanis (67 females, 30 males, 2 undisclosed) and 134 European-Americans (65 females, 69 males) reported a recent insult to their family where the offender was either a family or a non-family member. The insults targeted the family as collective or individual family members other than parents. Across targets, insults to one’s family had more negative emotional (e.g., more intense anger, shame) and social (greater relationship strain) consequences for Pakistanis than for European-Americans. Study 2 examined whether these effects extend to insults to parents. Fifty-one Pakistanis (29 females, 22 males) and 58 European-Americans (30 females, 28 males) responded to an insult-to-parents or an insult-to-self scenario. Insults-to-parents and insults-to-self elicited similar emotional responses among Pakistanis. By contrast, European-Americans responded more negatively (e.g., more intense anger) to an insult-to-self than to an insult-to-parents.