Honor and Emotional Reactions Click here to read the APA ethical principles of p
ID: 131952 • Letter: H
Question
Honor and Emotional Reactions Click here to read the APA ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. Using the South University Online Library, search the article, "A Bumpy Train Ride: A Field Experiment on Insult, Honor, and Emotional Reactions." Pay special attention to the Method section. Summarize the purpose of the study. Think about the specific issues or points they should have covered in the debriefing session. Consider the APA ethical requirements. Write the specific things the investigators would have had to include during the debriefing session if the study had been conducted in the United States. Explain why the investigators would have to include these specific things. Compile your work in a 1- to 2-page Microsoft Word document.
Explanation / Answer
Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. Also, the pdf of the paper mentioned in your question is not available for free online. My response will, therefore, contain help I can provide from other sources. You may use my response to aid your answer.
(Answer) There are several causes that elicit a belligerent reaction from an individual. When the ego of an individual is hurt, it becomes easier to evoke an angry reaction. In the paper “A bumpy train ride”, the focus group consists of individuals with either a high or low honour code.
On a Dutch train, a stranger insulted a few people individually. These insults evoked varied degrees of emotional reactions. People who had a high emotional reaction were people with a higher honour code. The people, who were stoic in comparison, were the ones with a lower honour code.
The basic flaw in this method is that no other dependent variable is considered. Other than an honour code, there could have been other factors at play. Perhaps the passenger has had a bad day. Also, the insult spewed by the person may have hit a specific memory that caused more anger.
The specific things the investigators would have to include in the debriefing session are the nature of the insults and a background on the individuals. Sometimes, individual from a particular area is prone to get angry because of a tough lifestyle and the busy lifestyle they probably live. Furthermore, if one were to accuse a passenger with a normal eyesight of being blind when they bumped into you would be more insulting to an actual blind person. Similarly, different insults are offensive to different people. Perhaps the honour code of an individual may have had very little to do with the emotional response.
If this experiment were to be conducted in the US, one very important criterion would be the location. Let us assume that people from a certain area of the States were less tolerant than another. The test would yield very different results in Alabama and in New York.
In fact, there has been an experiment with almost similar connotations in the US. Published in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’, in May 1996, was a study by the department of psychology of the University of Illinois. This study about “Culture of Honour” and it was based on an experiment conducted with the test subjects in an open environment.
Specifically, people from the north and the south of the US were the test subjects. These subjects bumped into strangers on the pavement and were called ‘as**ole’ by the stranger who proceeded to move on. It was noticed that statistically, people from the north mostly decided to move along as they were not affected by the stranger’s insult.
On the other hand, people from the south were:
All of these traits were evoked because they felt that they had to protect themselves from the insulted inflicted on their honour. This is why it is known as the “Culture of Honour.”
The negative reciprocity norm is clearly evident in the above experiment. Since the people of the north and south reacted differently, it goes further to prove that this is more than just biological. It is an indicator of different cultural aspects that have reared the community over time into harbouring negative reciprocity more and perhaps making these individuals less susceptible to positive reciprocity.
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