Cultural Influence on Personal Worth: A Qualitative Approach to Understand Honor and Dignity as Differential Dimensions of Self-Worth

Authors: Tanya Keni

Abstract:

Efforts to link culture and self, have been the focus, initially of Anthropology and later of Psychology in the first half of the 20th century. In doing so, cross-cultural researchers have endeavored to identify factors valuable for classifying cultures. One such central classification is that of individualism and collectivism which remains prominent. However, it overlooks certain other cultural dimensions that can be of interest and need attention. The current paper tries to move beyond this classic distinction, to cultures that are termed to be honor and dignity oriented. Both honor and dignity, refer to the worth of a person but bear different connotations and psychological consequences. While dignity is an independent concept of self-worth whose locus lies deep within the individual, honor is an interdependent concept that needs both personal as well as societal acknowledgment. This research takes an exploratory and qualitative approach to draw the individual, structural and contextual understanding of personal honor and dignity in broad cultures that are conceptualized as honor and dignity aimed. The aim is to understand the cultural influence on an individual’s self-worth, considering gender. 12 Focus group discussions were conducted across North India and Germany with four participants each. The research process was inspired by the approaches of social constructivism and critical realism. These discussions were transcribed and further analyzed using thematic analysis and the results have revealed differential themes for the concepts of honor and dignity. Certain dimensional similarities were also observed for both the cultural groups, however with differential usage of language. In particular, the North Indian group was seen using phrases that were oriented towards safeguarding against loss of honor or dignity. While the phrases of the German group were aligned towards worth-enhancement. The research also gives an illustration of how honor and dignity translate into behavioral practice that can exert an influence on important life decisions, especially about self and family for both males and females. In addition to these, the study also contributes to the literature on self-worth by developing the concept of ‘dignity’ for which there exists a dearth of research.

Keywords: culture, dignity, honor, self, self-worth