Examining the relationship between collective apology and forgiveness in the culture of honor: Research on university student sample

Although honor culture has been studied for a while in the literature, the related studies in Turkish psychology literature is relatively new. The facts such as a significant part of one's perception of one's self-worth is determined by other people, insult is a threat to honor, and responding to insults are among the main features that make this culture significant for the field of psychology. On the other hand, apologizing for transgression is recommended for relations. The findings in the literature on the effect of collective apology on forgiveness are contradictory. The aim of the present study is to contribute to the literature by examining the relationship between different collective apology conditions (denial of apology, non-response to apology request, simple apology and comprehensive apology) and forgiveness with considering the effect of honor culture (low and high endorsement of honor culture values). For this purpose, the sample of the present study consists of 342 university students that are 196 male and 146 female students whose ages are between 18 and 41 (M = 20.82, SD = 2.05). The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS 25.0 program. According to the findings of the study, it was revealed that forgiveness differs on the basis of the collective apology types, and also the endorsement of the honor culture values affects forgiveness. The results of the study were discussed on the basis of the literature and some suggestions were presented for the future studies.