Dov Cohen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3794417 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dov Cohen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dov |
| FAMILY NAME | Cohen |
| SIGNATURE | COHEN D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0520-8527 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 40 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 812 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 40 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Value endorsement among Protestants and Catholics within and between countries in Europe
Protestantism, as opposed to Catholicism, is widely seen as having contributed to the rise of Western individualism. However, little is known about potential value differences between these two branches of Christianity in contemporary Europe. In the current work, we examined patterns of value endorsement among current and former Protestants and Catholics within and between 20 European countries using data from the European Social Survey ( N = 163…
Gender, Grammar, and Personification in the Marketplace
We examine the influence of grammatical gender on decision making in an arena where irrational linguistic biases should be ruthlessly rooted out: stock markets. In an archival analysis of 15 years of data from Spanish-speaking countries, stocks of companies with grammatically male names showed greater upward momentum than stocks of companies with grammatically female names. We also “replicated” this effect experimentally, showing that Spanish-spe…
East Asians’ Lower Satisfaction With Homelife Is Plausibly Related to Lower Attitude Similarity Within Couples
World Values Survey respondents from East Asia (China and Japan) viewed themselves as less similar to their spouses on a variety of attitude domains, compared to respondents from Western and other non-Western cultures. Mediational analyses showed significant indirect effects from the East Asian variable through attitude dissimilarity to lower homelife satisfaction. In all regions, similarity with one’s spouse predicted homelife satisfaction. Unex…
The importance of being unearnest
cooperation in a society. The studies illuminate the role Opportunists play in producing these backfire effects. In addition to highlighting other features shaping culture (e.g., risk and reward in the environment, "founder effects" requiring a critical mass of certain strategies at a culture's initial stage), the studies help illustrate how Opportunists create aspects of culture that otherwise seem paradoxical, are dismissed as "error," or produ…
Attitudes, behavior, and institutional inversion
Psychologists often posit relatively straightforward attitude-behavior links. They also often study cultural arrangements as manifestations of attitudes and values writ large. However, we illustrate some difficulties with scaling up attitude-behavior principles from the individual-level to the cultural-level: Historical attitudes and values can lead to the creation of intermediating institutions, whose value-expressive functions may be at odds wi…
Missing Treasures
A comprehensive project conducted over the past few years to locate and document every book printed in Ladino, revealed that between the years 1490–1960, nearly four thousand titles were published. In this article, I will show that many Ladino books were lost over the generations. Some of those missing books were referenced in assorted sources. Others did not come to researchers’ attention until fairly recently. This study contains several exampl…
Coṃpendio delas šeḥiṭót (Constantinople ca. 1510)
It is commonly accepted that Hilkhot Sheḥiṭa u-Vdika (literally, ‘The Laws of Ritual Slaughter and Examination’—Constantinople ca. 1510) was the first publication ever printed in Judeo-Spanish. Yet scholars possessed no evidence that the work actually existed, and no information was available regarding its contents or language. Recently, however, the first four pages of the publication were discovered among the remnants of the Cairo Genizah. The …
Rationally Irrational?
A commitment to honor is a commitment to irrationality—at least in the short-run—because it involves defending one’s honor, regardless of stakes or cost. Yet, circumstances giving rise to honor cultures—lawless environments, portable (easy-to-steal) wealth—create milieus where people must appear tough to deter predators. Thus, what seems irrational in the short-run may be rational in the long-run. This chapter describes three agent-based models e…
Culture of Honor
This book focuses on a singular cause of male violence—the perpetrator's sense of threat to one of his most valued possessions, namely, his reputation for strength and toughness. The theme of this book is that the Southern United States had—and has—a type of culture of honor
Religion, repulsion, and reaction formation
Protestants were more likely than non-Protestants to demonstrate phenomena consistent with the use of reaction formation. Lab experiments showed that when manipulations were designed to produce taboo attractions (to unconventional sexual practices), Protestants instead showed greater repulsion. When implicitly conditioned to produce taboo repulsions (to African Americans), Protestants instead showed greater attraction. Supportive evidence from ot…
Roads more and less traveled
Western culture has 2 contradictory images of creativity: the artist as intensely emotional versus the artist as sublimator, for whom work becomes the outlet for what is repressed and denied. We show that both images are correct, but that the routes to creativity are culturally patterned, such that Catholic creatives are relatively more likely to take the emotionally intense route and Protestant creatives relatively more likely to take the sublim…
Sublimation, culture, and creativity
Combining insights from Freud and Weber, this article explores whether Protestants (vs. Catholics and Jews) are more likely to sublimate their taboo feelings and desires toward productive ends. In the Terman sample (Study 1), Protestant men and women who had sexual problems related to anxieties about taboos and depravity had greater creative accomplishments, as compared to those with sexual problems unrelated to such concerns and to those reporti…
Virtue and Virility
In many honor cultures, honor as martial honor and honor as character/integrity are often both subsumed under the banner of honor. In nonhonor cultures, these qualities are often separable. The present study examines political elites, revealing that Presidents, Congresspeople, and Supreme Court Justices from the Southern United States with a greater commitment to martial honor (as indexed by their military service) also show more integrity, chara…
Grounding cultural syndromes
The body is a carrier of relatively complex cultural values. Three experiments examined links between body comportment and honor (a cultural syndrome prizing female chastity, familial loyalty, and reputation). We put participants from nonhonor (Anglo‐Americans; Experiment 1) and honor (Latinos; Experiment 2) cultures in upright versus slouched postures and primed them with honor versus control words. In our third experiment, we surveyed participa…
Within- and between-culture variation
The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's…
The jury and abjury of my peers
The self is defined and judged differently by people from face and dignity cultures (in this case, Hong Kong and the United States, respectively). Across 3 experiments, people from a face culture absorbed the judgments of other people into their private self-definitions. Particularly important for people from a face culture are public representations--knowledge that is shared and known to be shared about someone. In contrast, people from a dignit…
The hard embodiment of culture
The way humans move and comport their bodies is one way they (literally) carry their culture. In pre‐wired embodiments , body comportment triggers basic, evolutionarily prepared affective and cognitive reactions that subsequently prime more complex representations. Culture suffuses this process, because (1) cultural artifacts, affordances, and practices make certain body comportments more likely, (2) cultural practices, rituals, schemas, and rule…
Culture, psyche, and body make each other up
The commentaries make important points, including ones about the purposeful uses of embodiment effects. Research examining such effects needs to look at how such effects play themselves out in people's everyday lives. Research might usefully integrate work on embodiment with work on attribution and work in other disciplines concerned with body–psyche connections (e.g., research on somaticizing versus “psychologizing” illnesses and hypercognizing …
Stand by Your Man
Cultural values emphasizing female loyalty, sacrifice, and male honor may indirectly sanction relationship violence and reward women who remain in abusive relationships. Two studies compare participants from subcultures emphasizing honor (Latinos and southern Anglos in Study 1, Chileans in Study 2) and subcultures without strong honor traditions (northern U.S. Anglos in Study 1, Anglo-Canadians in Study 2). In Study 1, participants watch a videot…
U.S. Southern and Northern Differences in Perceptions of Norms About Aggression
This article explores one reason why norms for male honor-related aggression persist in the U.S. South, even though they may no longer be functional. The authors suggest that, in addition to cultural differences in internalized honor-related values, southerners are more likely than northerners to perceive peer endorsement of aggression norms. Study 1 found that southern males were especially likely to overestimate the aggressiveness of their peer…
Precarious manhood
The authors report 5 studies that demonstrate that manhood, in contrast to womanhood, is seen as a precarious state requiring continual social proof and validation. Because of this precariousness, they argue that men feel especially threatened by challenges to their masculinity. Certain male-typed behaviors, such as physical aggression, may result from this anxiety. Studies 1-3 document a robust belief in (a) the precarious nature of manhood rela…
The Kentucky Tragedy
Journal Article The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conflict and Change in Antebellum America Get access The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conflict and Change in Antebellum America. By Bruce Dickson D.Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xii, 183 pp. $40.00, isbn978-0-8071-3173-2.) Daniel A. Cohen Daniel A. Cohen Case Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, Ohio Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Schola…
Culture, self-construal, and affective reactions to successful and unsuccessful others
The Emotional Broadcaster Theory of Social Sharing
This article introduces the Emotional Broadcaster Theory (EBT) of emotional disclosure. EBT proposes that the intrapsychic need to share experiences with others serves the interpersonal function of transmitting news. According to the model, psychologically arousing stories will travel across social networks. In addition, the extent to which stories travel reflects the degree to which the original teller was affected by the experience shared. Thes…
Culture Of Honor
New Directions in Social Psychology -- Introduction -- Violence and Honor in the Southern United States -- Homicide Rate Differences Between North and South -- Differences Between Northerners and Southerners in Attitudes Toward Violence -- Insult, Anger, and Aggression: An Experimental Ethnography of the Culture of Honor -- Collective Expressions of the Culture of Honor: Violence, Social Policy, and the Law -- Culture of Honor: Manifestations, Ex…
Within- and between-culture variation
The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's…
Patterns of individualism and collectivism across the United States
Although the individualism-collectivism dimension is usually examined in a U.S. versus Asian context, there is variation within the United States. The authors created an eight-item index ranking states in terms of collectivist versus individualist tendencies. As predicted, collectivist tendencies were strongest in the Deep South, and individualist tendencies were strongest in the Mountain West and Great Plains. In Part 2, convergent validity for …
Precarious manhood
The authors report 5 studies that demonstrate that manhood, in contrast to womanhood, is seen as a precarious state requiring continual social proof and validation. Because of this precariousness, they argue that men feel especially threatened by challenges to their masculinity. Certain male-typed behaviors, such as physical aggression, may result from this anxiety. Studies 1-3 document a robust belief in (a) the precarious nature of manhood rela…
Male honor and female fidelity
Two studies explored how domestic violence may be implicitly or explicitly sanctioned and reinforced in cultures where honor is a salient organizing theme. Three general predictions were supported: (a) female infidelity damages a man's reputation, particularly in honor cultures; (b) this reputation can be partially restored through the use of violence; and (c) women in honor cultures are expected to remain loyal in the face of jealousy-related vi…
Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor
Culture, social organization, and patterns of violence
"When You Call Me That, Smile!" How Norms for Politeness, Interaction Styles, and Aggression Work Together in Southern Culture
Dov Cohen, Joseph Vandello, Sylvia Puente, Adrian Rantilla, "When You Call Me That, Smile!" How Norms for Politeness, Interaction Styles, and Aggression Work Together in Southern Culture, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 257-275
Cultural variation
Cultural systems vary widely across the world. Partly this is due to different cultures' occupying different ecological and environmental niches. But partly it is due to similar circumstances giving rise to multiple stable equilibriums, each with a distinct cultural form. Using insights and examples from various fields, this article illustrates the way that multiple equilibriums can emerge and the forces that push a culture toward one equilibrium…
Law, social policy, and violence
Social policies reflect cultural values. Because of their frontier heritage, the U.S. South and West were hypothesized to have cultures favoring violence for self-protection. Predictions were confirmed for laws relating to guns, defense of self and home, and foreign policy. In addition, the legacy of slavery should make the South more accepting of violence used for coercion and punishment. Predictions were confirmed for laws relating to spousal a…
The jury and abjury of my peers
The self is defined and judged differently by people from face and dignity cultures (in this case, Hong Kong and the United States, respectively). Across 3 experiments, people from a face culture absorbed the judgments of other people into their private self-definitions. Particularly important for people from a face culture are public representations--knowledge that is shared and known to be shared about someone. In contrast, people from a dignit…
U.S. Southern and Northern Differences in Perceptions of Norms About Aggression
This article explores one reason why norms for male honor-related aggression persist in the U.S. South, even though they may no longer be functional. The authors suggest that, in addition to cultural differences in internalized honor-related values, southerners are more likely than northerners to perceive peer endorsement of aggression norms. Study 1 found that southern males were especially likely to overestimate the aggressiveness of their peer…
The hard embodiment of culture
The way humans move and comport their bodies is one way they (literally) carry their culture. In pre‐wired embodiments , body comportment triggers basic, evolutionarily prepared affective and cognitive reactions that subsequently prime more complex representations. Culture suffuses this process, because (1) cultural artifacts, affordances, and practices make certain body comportments more likely, (2) cultural practices, rituals, schemas, and rule…
The Emotional Broadcaster Theory of Social Sharing
This article introduces the Emotional Broadcaster Theory (EBT) of emotional disclosure. EBT proposes that the intrapsychic need to share experiences with others serves the interpersonal function of transmitting news. According to the model, psychologically arousing stories will travel across social networks. In addition, the extent to which stories travel reflects the degree to which the original teller was affected by the experience shared. Thes…
The American National Conversation about (Everything but) Shame
IT is impossible to understand America’s foreign policy, its relatively high homicide rate, its contentious discussions over values, and its zealous sense of mission without reference to shame. In fact, it is difficult to understand most issues that dominate the political and cultural landscape in the United States without reference to shame. Shame figures somewhere in the background of most American discussions of morality or the lack of it. It …
Stand by Your Man
Cultural values emphasizing female loyalty, sacrifice, and male honor may indirectly sanction relationship violence and reward women who remain in abusive relationships. Two studies compare participants from subcultures emphasizing honor (Latinos and southern Anglos in Study 1, Chileans in Study 2) and subcultures without strong honor traditions (northern U.S. Anglos in Study 1, Anglo-Canadians in Study 2). In Study 1, participants watch a videot…
Sublimation, culture, and creativity
Combining insights from Freud and Weber, this article explores whether Protestants (vs. Catholics and Jews) are more likely to sublimate their taboo feelings and desires toward productive ends. In the Terman sample (Study 1), Protestant men and women who had sexual problems related to anxieties about taboos and depravity had greater creative accomplishments, as compared to those with sexual problems unrelated to such concerns and to those reporti…
Grounding cultural syndromes
The body is a carrier of relatively complex cultural values. Three experiments examined links between body comportment and honor (a cultural syndrome prizing female chastity, familial loyalty, and reputation). We put participants from nonhonor (Anglo‐Americans; Experiment 1) and honor (Latinos; Experiment 2) cultures in upright versus slouched postures and primed them with honor versus control words. In our third experiment, we surveyed participa…
Culture, memory, and the self
Culture, self-construal, and affective reactions to successful and unsuccessful others
Attitudes, behavior, and institutional inversion
Psychologists often posit relatively straightforward attitude-behavior links. They also often study cultural arrangements as manifestations of attitudes and values writ large. However, we illustrate some difficulties with scaling up attitude-behavior principles from the individual-level to the cultural-level: Historical attitudes and values can lead to the creation of intermediating institutions, whose value-expressive functions may be at odds wi…
Roads more and less traveled
Western culture has 2 contradictory images of creativity: the artist as intensely emotional versus the artist as sublimator, for whom work becomes the outlet for what is repressed and denied. We show that both images are correct, but that the routes to creativity are culturally patterned, such that Catholic creatives are relatively more likely to take the emotionally intense route and Protestant creatives relatively more likely to take the sublim…
Culture, psyche, and body make each other up
The commentaries make important points, including ones about the purposeful uses of embodiment effects. Research examining such effects needs to look at how such effects play themselves out in people's everyday lives. Research might usefully integrate work on embodiment with work on attribution and work in other disciplines concerned with body–psyche connections (e.g., research on somaticizing versus “psychologizing” illnesses and hypercognizing …
Self-Protection and the Culture of Honor
The southern United States has long been known to be more violent than the northern United States. The authors argue that this may be due in part to an ideology justifying violence for self-protection and for maintaining "honor " or a reputation for toughness. Analysis of data from three surveys shows that southern White males do not endorse violence unconditionally but do endorse violence when it is used for self-protection, to defend one's hono…
Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor
Law, social policy, and violence
Social policies reflect cultural values. Because of their frontier heritage, the U.S. South and West were hypothesized to have cultures favoring violence for self-protection. Predictions were confirmed for laws relating to guns, defense of self and home, and foreign policy. In addition, the legacy of slavery should make the South more accepting of violence used for coercion and punishment. Predictions were confirmed for laws relating to spousal a…
Field Experiments Examining the Culture of Honor
Two field experiments illustrate how institutions of the U.S. South and West can help perpetuate violence related to a culture of honor. In Study 1, employers across the United States were sent letters from job applicants who had allegedly killed someone in an honor-related conflict. Southern and western companies were more likely than their northern counterparts to respond in an understanding and cooperative way. In Study 2, newspapers were sent…
Honor & Slavery
Journal Article Honor & Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, the Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting, and Gambling in the Old South. By Kenneth S. Greenberg and Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South. By Richard E. Nisbett Get access Christopher Morris Christopher Morris University of Texas, Arlington, Texas Search for other works by this author …
Culture of Honor
Culture, social organization, and patterns of violence
"When You Call Me That, Smile!" How Norms for Politeness, Interaction Styles, and Aggression Work Together in Southern Culture
Dov Cohen, Joseph Vandello, Sylvia Puente, Adrian Rantilla, "When You Call Me That, Smile!" How Norms for Politeness, Interaction Styles, and Aggression Work Together in Southern Culture, Social Psychology Quarterly, Vol. 62, No. 3 (Sep., 1999), pp. 257-275
Patterns of individualism and collectivism across the United States
Although the individualism-collectivism dimension is usually examined in a U.S. versus Asian context, there is variation within the United States. The authors created an eight-item index ranking states in terms of collectivist versus individualist tendencies. As predicted, collectivist tendencies were strongest in the Deep South, and individualist tendencies were strongest in the Mountain West and Great Plains. In Part 2, convergent validity for …
Cultural variation
Cultural variation
Cultural systems vary widely across the world. Partly this is due to different cultures' occupying different ecological and environmental niches. But partly it is due to similar circumstances giving rise to multiple stable equilibriums, each with a distinct cultural form. Using insights and examples from various fields, this article illustrates the way that multiple equilibriums can emerge and the forces that push a culture toward one equilibrium…
Implicit theories of relationships
The role of implicit theories in romantic relationships was investigated in two studies. People holding a soulmate theory, who believed that finding the right person is most important for a satisfying relationship, were compared to people holding a work–it–out theory, who believed that effort is most important for building a successful relationship. In Study 1, college students (N = 527) completed a set of questionnaires, including measures of re…
Culture, memory, and the self
Male honor and female fidelity
Two studies explored how domestic violence may be implicitly or explicitly sanctioned and reinforced in cultures where honor is a salient organizing theme. Three general predictions were supported: (a) female infidelity damages a man's reputation, particularly in honor cultures; (b) this reputation can be partially restored through the use of violence; and (c) women in honor cultures are expected to remain loyal in the face of jealousy-related vi…
The American National Conversation about (Everything but) Shame
IT is impossible to understand America’s foreign policy, its relatively high homicide rate, its contentious discussions over values, and its zealous sense of mission without reference to shame. In fact, it is difficult to understand most issues that dominate the political and cultural landscape in the United States without reference to shame. Shame figures somewhere in the background of most American discussions of morality or the lack of it. It …
Culture, self-construal, and affective reactions to successful and unsuccessful others
The Emotional Broadcaster Theory of Social Sharing
This article introduces the Emotional Broadcaster Theory (EBT) of emotional disclosure. EBT proposes that the intrapsychic need to share experiences with others serves the interpersonal function of transmitting news. According to the model, psychologically arousing stories will travel across social networks. In addition, the extent to which stories travel reflects the degree to which the original teller was affected by the experience shared. Thes…
The Kentucky Tragedy
Journal Article The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conflict and Change in Antebellum America Get access The Kentucky Tragedy: A Story of Conflict and Change in Antebellum America. By Bruce Dickson D.Jr. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. xii, 183 pp. $40.00, isbn978-0-8071-3173-2.) Daniel A. Cohen Daniel A. Cohen Case Western Reserve UniversityCleveland, Ohio Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Schola…
U.S. Southern and Northern Differences in Perceptions of Norms About Aggression
This article explores one reason why norms for male honor-related aggression persist in the U.S. South, even though they may no longer be functional. The authors suggest that, in addition to cultural differences in internalized honor-related values, southerners are more likely than northerners to perceive peer endorsement of aggression norms. Study 1 found that southern males were especially likely to overestimate the aggressiveness of their peer…
Precarious manhood
The authors report 5 studies that demonstrate that manhood, in contrast to womanhood, is seen as a precarious state requiring continual social proof and validation. Because of this precariousness, they argue that men feel especially threatened by challenges to their masculinity. Certain male-typed behaviors, such as physical aggression, may result from this anxiety. Studies 1-3 document a robust belief in (a) the precarious nature of manhood rela…
The hard embodiment of culture
The way humans move and comport their bodies is one way they (literally) carry their culture. In pre‐wired embodiments , body comportment triggers basic, evolutionarily prepared affective and cognitive reactions that subsequently prime more complex representations. Culture suffuses this process, because (1) cultural artifacts, affordances, and practices make certain body comportments more likely, (2) cultural practices, rituals, schemas, and rule…
Culture, psyche, and body make each other up
The commentaries make important points, including ones about the purposeful uses of embodiment effects. Research examining such effects needs to look at how such effects play themselves out in people's everyday lives. Research might usefully integrate work on embodiment with work on attribution and work in other disciplines concerned with body–psyche connections (e.g., research on somaticizing versus “psychologizing” illnesses and hypercognizing …
Stand by Your Man
Cultural values emphasizing female loyalty, sacrifice, and male honor may indirectly sanction relationship violence and reward women who remain in abusive relationships. Two studies compare participants from subcultures emphasizing honor (Latinos and southern Anglos in Study 1, Chileans in Study 2) and subcultures without strong honor traditions (northern U.S. Anglos in Study 1, Anglo-Canadians in Study 2). In Study 1, participants watch a videot…
The jury and abjury of my peers
The self is defined and judged differently by people from face and dignity cultures (in this case, Hong Kong and the United States, respectively). Across 3 experiments, people from a face culture absorbed the judgments of other people into their private self-definitions. Particularly important for people from a face culture are public representations--knowledge that is shared and known to be shared about someone. In contrast, people from a dignit…
Grounding cultural syndromes
The body is a carrier of relatively complex cultural values. Three experiments examined links between body comportment and honor (a cultural syndrome prizing female chastity, familial loyalty, and reputation). We put participants from nonhonor (Anglo‐Americans; Experiment 1) and honor (Latinos; Experiment 2) cultures in upright versus slouched postures and primed them with honor versus control words. In our third experiment, we surveyed participa…
Psychology (34 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Cultural Differences and Values (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Honor (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Social and Intergroup Psychology (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Criminology (9 works)