Cultural Emphasis on Honor, Modesty, or Self-Enhancement: Implications for the Survey-Response Process

We ask and answer questions every day. But beneath these seemingly straightforward interchanges lie a series of cognitive and communicative processes, which when better understood allow for better understanding of how cultures and questions influence answers (for reviews see Schwarz, 1999; Sirken et al., 1999; Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, 1996; Tourangeau, Rips, & Rasinski, 2000). In answering questions, people take into account what the question likely meant, bring to mind relevant information, and then edit this information to form a response (Strack & Martin, 1987; Tourangeau, 1984). Each of these steps may be influenced both by features of the questionnaire and research context as well as by the culture within which the research is taking place. What the question likely means, its pragmatic meaning, influences both what comes to mind and the response-editing process. Advances in two fields, cultural (and cross-cultural) psychology and cognitive survey methodology, provide important insights into these processes. Unfortunately these fields have not converged so their insights have not been integrated. This integration is addressed in here and in the preceding companion chapter, Chapter 10. Much of the current cultural and cross-cultural literature focuses on the contrast between Western individualism and East Asian collectivism and the Schwarz and colleagues' chapter provides an insightful overview of this literature. In the current chapter, we move beyond East Asian, Confucian-based collectivism, to address another form of collectivism, honor-based collectivism, a kind of collectivism prevalent in other parts of the world—including the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Latin American countries. Because relatively less