ABSTRACT
This chapter conducts some experiments with Brian Bowdle and Norbert Schwarz to examine the sequence of reactions following an insult to determine whether southerners become more upset by affronts and are more likely to take aggressive action to compensate for the diminishment they experience. The findings of these experiments bridge the gap between the survey data showing that southerners are more accepting of violence in response to an insult and the archival data showing that homicide rates are higher in the South. People in a culture of honor who respond with aggressive and dominant behaviors after an insult may be acting quite rationally if they are trying to avoid the stigma of the insult from their peers. The chapter examines whether the insult would make southerners more hostile even to neutral stimuli but leave northerners unaffected. There was no such pattern for any of the word completion, face rating, or neutral scenario completion tasks.
