Honour Values and Acculturation Experiences

References to honor in Western Europe are often encountered in the context of honor-related crimes that take place in (generally Muslim) minority groups. The societal and political discourse frequently positions honor values in opposition to ‘Western’ values and suggests that honor values, promoted by immigrants’ cultures of origin, lead to such tragic events (Korteweg & Yurdakul, 2009). In the absence of research on culture of honor and acculturation, this initial study attempted to understand the relationships between endorsement of honor values and acculturation experiences, focusing on perceived cultural distance, host and heritage cultural orientation and acculturative stress, with immigrants from dignity (North America and Western Europe), proximal honor (South/South-East Europe) and distal honor (Middle East, North Africa and South Asia) cultures who reside in the UK (N = 278). Results demonstrated that, after controlling for religiosity, length of stay in the UK and general perceived cultural distance, for immigrants from dignity cultures integrity honor values and family honor values were associated with higher host and heritage cultural orientation, respectively; for immigrants from proximal honor cultures, family honor values were associated with higher host and heritage cultural orientation; and for immigrants from distal honor cultures, feminine honor values were related to lower host cultural orientation. Family and feminine honor values were related to higher, whereas integrity honor values were related to lower acculturative stress for immigrants from distal and proximal honor cultures. These results indicate that honor values are not unequivocally in conflict with immigrants’ successful acculturation to the UK.