We sent retail outlets around the country a job-seeking letter purporting to be from a young man who had killed someone who had been sleeping with his fianc e. Responders from the South were more sympathetic than northerners were. In addition, we sent college newspaper editors around the country a police blotter-style account of a crime of passion that involved an insult. We asked the editors to write up the story for their paper for a fee. A version of the story that contained no insult elicited no comparable differences. Furthermore, laws and social policies in the South reflect the culture of honor.
Southern laws are more likely to exonerate people who shoot someone escaping with their property.
The South's culture of honor will surely change. Economic and social changes, together with immigration from other regions, will eventually erode what remains of the tradition. In the meantime, the contrast between North and South shows that violence by men is a matter of nurture as much as one of nature. Male aggression is not inevitable. Whether a man reaches for his gun or his civility when insulted is a matter of culture.