Machismo: A Latin Culture of Honor? A Quantitative Study
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Authors
Caston, Teresa
Issue Date
2015
Type
Dissertation
Language
en
Keywords
"machismo","southern culture of honor","masculinity","aggression"
Alternative Title
Abstract
Machismo is a social construct that ascribes certain behaviors to the roles of men in the Latino community. This construct determines how Latino males are supposed to behave or respond or risk appearing weak in front of others. When faced with slights or affronts from others, these responses can often lead to murder. This construct is similar to another concept coined as the Southern Culture of Honor by Nesbitt and Cohen. The Southern Culture of Honor theory posits that white men from the South are prone to respond more aggressively even when faced with relatively trivial matters such as slights or affronts when compared to white men from the North and can often lead to murder. The purpose of this study was to examine the apparent similarity between the Southern Culture of Honor and Machismo by testing whether Latino males perform similarly to white males from the Southern United States on the indicators that Nisbett, Polly, and Lang (1995) originally used to demonstrate the existence of the Southern Culture of Honor. The results indicated that although Hispanics tended to commit more honor-related crimes than non-honor-related crimes compared to non-Hispanics, the
significance was relatively small, and a difference was detected because the database was so large.