Invitation to Psychology

Chapter 2 Theories of Personality 67

these students would respond psychologically and

physiologically to being insulted (Cohen et al.,

1996). They explained that the experiment would

assess the students’ performance on various tasks

and that the experimenter would be taking saliva

samples to measure everyone’s blood sugar lev-

els throughout the procedure. Actually, the saliva

samples were used to measure levels of cortisol, a

hormone associated with high levels of stress, and

testosterone, which is associated with dominance

and aggression.

At one point in the experiment, a confed-

erate of the experimenter, who seemed to be

another student participant, bumped into each

man and called him an insulting name (a seven-

letter word beginning with “a,” if you want to

know). As you can see in Figure 2.2 on the next

page, Northerners responded calmly to the insult;

if anything, they thought it was funny. But many

Southerners were immediately inflamed and their

levels of cortisol and testosterone shot up. They

were more likely to feel that their masculin-

ity had been threatened, and they were more

likely to retaliate aggressively than Northerners

were. Southerners and Northerners who were not

insulted were alike on most measures, with the

exception that the Southerners were actually more

polite and deferential. It appears that they have

more obliging manners than Northerners—until

they are insulted. Then, look out.

Evaluating Cultural Approaches

LO 2.17

A woman we know, originally from England, mar-

ried a Lebanese man. They were happy together but

had the usual number of marital misunderstandings

to it immediately with force. This would explain
why cattle rustling and horse thievery were capital
crimes in the Old West, and why Mediterranean
and Middle Eastern herding cultures even today
place a high value on male aggressiveness. And
indeed, when Nisbett looked at agricultural prac-
tices within the South, he found that homicide
rates were more than twice as high in the hills and
dry plains areas, where herding occurs, as in farm-
ing regions.
The emphasis on aggressiveness and vigilance
in herding communities, in turn, fosters a culture
of honor, in which even small disputes and trivial
insults (trivial to people from other cultures,
that is) put a man’s reputation for toughness on
the line, requiring him to respond with violence
to restore his status (Bosson & Vandello, 2011;
Cohen, 1998). Although the herding economy
has become much less important in the South
and West than it once was, the legacy of its cul-
ture of honor remains. These regions have rates
of honor-related homicides (such as murder to
avenge a perceived insult to one’s family) that are
five times higher than in other regions of the coun-
try. Cultures of honor have more school shootings
per capita (Brown, Osterman, & Barnes, 2009)
and higher rates of domestic violence. Both sexes
in such cultures believe it is appropriate for a man
to physically assault a woman if he believes she is
threatening his honor by being unfaithful or by
leaving him (Vandello & Cohen, 2008).
Nisbett and his colleagues also wanted to
demonstrate how these external cultural norms
literally get under the skin to affect physiol-
ogy and personality. They brought 173 Northern
and Southern male students into their lab and
conducted three experiments to measure how

Many people assume that men can’t help being violent because of their biology. Yet, on average, men in agricultural
economies are far more cooperative and nonviolent than men in herding economies. Amish farmers have always
had extremely low rates of violence, whereas in the Old West, the cattle-herding cowboy culture was a violent one.
(Fortunately, the shoot-out here is a reenactment.)