Abstract
Participation in the “honor culture” of poor black inner cities puts young men on constant alert for challenges to their reputations. Hypothetically, this vigilance raises their testosterone (T), which in turn facilitates dominant contests that may end violently. One prior study reports the predicted hormonal pattern including higher T among young black men with low education, compared to young white men with low education, but no race difference in T between young men who are better educated or in older men (Mazur 1995). However an attempt to find this pattern on another large sample failed to do so (Mazur 2009). The present results, using the HANES 2011-2012 data set, do replicate the predicted pattern among men. The pattern is not seen among teenage boys or among females.
Highlights
Honor CulturesThe high rate of violence in the history of the American South, relative to the North, has been attributed to the South’s “culture of violence” wherein Southern men, when perceiving insults to themselves or their families, are expected to defend their reputations or else lose face (Nisbett, 1993; Nisbett and Cohen, 1996)
There are four separate plots for black men with ≤high school or some college, and for white men with ≤high school or some college.4 (Plotted points are based on 38–180 subjects.) All plots show T declining with age, with the steepest decline among poorly educated black men
In the 20–29 age group, mean T among black men with ≤high school is 64 ng/dL higher than mean T among better-educated black men (p = 0.02, t-test, two tail), who are similar to whites
Summary
Honor CulturesThe high rate of violence in the history of the American South, relative to the North, has been attributed to the South’s “culture of violence” wherein Southern men, when perceiving insults to themselves or their families, are expected to defend their reputations or else lose face (Nisbett, 1993; Nisbett and Cohen, 1996). When young men place special emphasis on protecting their reputations, and they are not restrained from doing so, dominance contests become ubiquitous, the hallmark of male-to-male interaction (Thrasher, 1963; Sanchez-Jankowsky, 1991). This may partially account for the high incidence of violence among young black men in the U.S In 2013, for example, the FBI reports that 38% of murderers were known to be black (race was unknown for 29% of perpetrators) and 51% of victims were black (The U.S population was 13% black in 2010). Most perpetrators and victims are males under the age of 30.1
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