Abstract

Since Nisbett and Cohen proposed the psychosocial approach to analyze culture of honor, the differences among geographical zones in endorsing honor codes, and especially, the justification for using violence to restore honor have attracted a wide corpus of research. Not only is honor a multifaceted construct that pervades the individual response, but it is also a powerful motive that shapes social behavior. Thus, to analyze both the positive and negative “sideµ of honor could help researchers and practitioners to better understand the phenomenon of intimate partner violence as well as to propose interventions based on protective variables useful to reduce the masculine violent response to perceived threat to honor. In this paper, we analyze the honor culture as a cultural logic resulting in sexism or gender inequalities. We propose protective variables like emotional intelligence as a means to reduce intimate partner violence.