- Honour culture is related to both the behavioral activation scale and Promotion Regulatory Focus
- Face culture may be related to inhibition and prevention regulatory focus
- Relational mobility appears to be related to both ** cultural differences at least for sensitivity to loss of face, and ** Activation and inhibitory motivational systems
- Culture may mediate the relationship between relational mobility and prevention regulatory focus
“Saving Face” is a concept many English speakers are familiar with, but the concept of “face” representing one’s reputation in society is commonly considered to have arisen out of East Asian culture and Chinese culture in particular, where the concept is particularly important. While in English-speaking cultures, people often speak of “saving face”, or avoiding embarrassment, the phrase “losing face” is more prevalent in Chinese and other Asian cultures. In East Asian culture, “Face” is not simply equivalent to prestige or social reputation. Hu (1944) wrote it is prestige or social reputation gained from performing one’s social roles well and being recognized for it by others. The incentive to maintain face has been described as important for maintaining a collectivist mindset and harmonious relationships between individuals in a collectivist culture.
The honor subscale assesses the extent to which people endorse honor values. This scale includes the measure of strength of concern for family honor and integrity in social relations.
Honor is considered as “the value of a person in his own eyes, but also in the eyes of his society. It is his estimation of his own worth, his claim to pride, but it is also the acknowledgement of that claim…his right to pride” (Pitt-Rivers, 1966, p. 21). People who endorse higher levels of honor are more likely to demand respect, not tolerate being cheated or affronted, and pay back wrongs done to him or her (Leung & Cohen, 2011). Past studies have shown that the cultures of honor are predominant in Latin America, Southern US and Middle East.
Dignity culture emphasizes the individual rather than groups or families, and emphasizes the inherent and equal worth of individuals rather than placing individuals in social hierarchies.
This culture is hypothesized as being more prevalent in the Northeastern and Midwestern United States. However, there has been very little study of dignity culture. It is said that a fish doesn’t see the water it swims in because it’s just always been there. Similarly, “dignity culture” may be under-studied as a particular cultural mindset because it reflects cultural assumptions that researchers and social psychologists take for granted. Dignity culture is arguably the dominant cultural expression in the United States and English-speaking world, and many researchers come from a dignity culture themselves. As a result, it is not often recognized as a particular culture. Our aim is to observe how it might interact alongside other cultural mindsets.