The authors of this study globally test the culture of honor hypothesis, which proposes that societies with traditional herding practices developed value systems that encourage revenge and violence. Because their livelihood depends on a mobile asset, herders are more vulnerable to theft and may be more likely to turn to violence or aggressiveness to defend their animals. The authors found dependence on herding to be significantly associated with both past and contemporary conflict and punishment.

The authors of this study globally test the culture of honor hypothesis, which proposes that societies with traditional herding practices developed value systems that encourage revenge and violence. Because their livelihood depends on a mobile asset, herders are more vulnerable to theft and may be more likely to turn to violence or aggressiveness to defend their animals. The authors found dependence on herding to be significantly associated with both past and contemporary conflict and punishment.

The authors of this study globally test the culture of honor hypothesis, which proposes that societies with traditional herding practices developed value systems that encourage revenge and violence. Because their livelihood depends on a mobile asset, herders are more vulnerable to theft and may be more likely to turn to violence or aggressiveness to defend their animals. The authors found dependence on herding to be significantly associated with both past and contemporary conflict and punishment.

The “culture of honor” hypothesis holds that subsistence strategies relying more heavily on pastoralism tend to encourage the development of moral frameworks centered on honor and revenge. This study uses ethnographic data from the Ethnographic Atlas and other sources to investigate morality among the descendants of pastoralists, who may have been raised in similar cultural settings but have not necessarily experienced the material realities of pastoralism firsthand. It finds that descendants of pastoralists continue to exhibit a high emphasis on retaliation and revenge in civil and non-civil conflicts, and in their historical folklore.