A Study of Social and Cultural Factors Affecting Honor Killings

Introduction: Honor or shame killings refer to the murdering of a family member by other relatives or community members due to her/his actions and behaviors that are considered immoral and a threat to the dignity and honor of the society. The main objective of this study was to examine the social and cultural factors affecting honor killings among rural families. Methods: This survey was applied research in terms of its purpose and nature. It also followed quantitative, descriptive, and analytical methods which used a close-ended and Likert-based scale questionnaire to gather data. The reliability of the questionnaire was approved by Cronbach’s alpha test. From one thousand, two hundred fifty rural households as the population of the study, two hundred and ninety-three households were selected as the sample through Cochran formula and stratified sampling methods. Results: The findings demonstrated that there was a significant relationship between social prejudices0.610, collectivism0.348, sensitivity to honor0.401, masculine attitude0.519, social isolation0.678, social poverty0.489, cultural poverty0.710 and economical poverty0.363 with honor killings. However, there was no significant relationship between social exclusion with the occurrence of honor killings. Regression results also revealed that honor killings (Beta=0.324) are mainly affected by social poverty. Conclusions: The results showed that factors affecting honor killings in rural areas were appropriately justified as variables of this study. Furthermore, this result confirms previous research results including Sev’er2014, Zaumot2014, Singhal2014, Marcus and Jacques2014. In general, according to the findings of the current study as well as findings from the literature, honor killings are often considered as a social-cultural phenomenon.