What do you Understand by Reputation? Untangling the Relation between Honor, Dignity and Face.

Researchers are increasingly adopting the trichotomy of honor, dignity and face cultures as a framework to analyze cross-cultural differences. However, the conceptualization and application of these constructs varies among researchers, and, to the best of our knowledge, draws on existing measures that have received limited validation. Having applied an adapted version of honor-dignity-face scale, originally developed by Severance et al. (2013), in an online pilot study across seven countries (total n = 345, Costa Rica, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, the Netherlands, Poland and the United States), we found low reliability scores across all three dimensions. The results in combination with various discussions with local academics also suggested poor cross-cultural construct validity. Although honor, dignity and face concepts were found to exist across all seven countries, emic definitions did not fully correspond to academic definitions and implied more interplay and overlap between the various categories, with reputation as an underlying factor. To better understand emic interpretations of reputation and its relation to the experience of honor, dignity and face we conducted in-depth interviews across these seven countries. We also assessed the validity of the piloted scale across a larger cross-cultural sample. The results of this two-pronged approach will be discussed.