Respect?

[lamp]

How do you define it?

How do you gain it?

What makes YOU respect a person?

Is it the achievement or rather his presentation or even a combination of both?

 

How do some people manage to not get respected to a point that people will dance on their nose, whereas other people get respect as soon as they enter the room?

 

Suggestions, opinions, experiences - all welcome.

[PhDwannabe]

How do you define it?

 

Typically, I define it while standing some distance outside of the Medical Science forum.

[lamp]

"Distance" is a good word and is related to "respect" just like this thread is related to psychology.

 

I define respect as in "to eighth" somebody, or to treat somebody with care, which also often means treating somebody with distance.

[mississippichem]

Topic moved to Psychiatry and Psychology which falls under medical science anyway. So no harm no foul.

[PhDwannabe]

This is not the sort of dataless navel-gazing that really belongs in psychology & psychiatry. But I'm done complaining.

[lemur]

I'd say respect is about taking someone seriously as a person; i.e. not dismissing them, condescending, etc.

[TonyMcC]

The feelings that engender respect seem to change with age. Sadly, some of my younger male aquaitances think that a person to be feared is a person to be respected. I believe this is common belief among the more common criminal classes (who are not my aquaintances). Anyway here is a definition - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respect

[eqo]

Respect is something that requires premise, a foundation of which man can follow. There can be off-springs of this foundation, different type-sets for different hiveminds. It is dependant on the social circle that one chooses to take part in; and the wants and needs of all of the people taking part. If we were all living in a "Scarface"-like social circle, then any respect made would be budding from our want for power and our need for money (to achieve power). I could kill 1,000,000 people and still receive respect from 'Tony Montana', for it had helped him receive profit - he's more powerful and I may have made him a bit of money.

 

I define it as being respectful/careful to the wants and needs of others. You can gain it by being consistent and trustworthy (i.e. it's not just a one off happening, it defines you). I respect people through love and the branches of friendship, for many of reasons. It can even benefit myself mentally, spiritually, physically, present and future by simply respecting others truthfully.

[Athena]

My sense of respect is along the line of Ego's. My grandmother lived by 3 values, which I think would resolve most human problems.

 

1. We respect everyone, because we are respectful people. It doesn't matter who the other is, because the other does not determine our behavior, we do. The other could be a bum or the mayor, we treat both the same, because of who we are.

 

2. We act with dignity and protect the dignity of others. I think this is highly important, and it brings out the best in others.

 

3. We act with integrity. This is beyond don't lie, steal or cheat, and includes being honorable.

 

My grandmother was a school teacher when teachers believed they were defending democracy in the classroom. These teachers were bringing us to a very different experience of democracy than our experience since we replaced liberal education with education for democracy. We once understood we protect our liberty by being moral people. I don't think that is understood today, and I have concerns that we might be becoming a police state?

 

The book "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order" by Samuel P. Huntington questions if all civilizations will fall to barbarianism. It was obviously this thread was started to resolve a conflict, and it might have been more effective if it remained where it was started. Obviously someone had bad manners and was not respectful, and someone was attempting to manage the problem, in a socially appropriate way. Now if we continue to be civilized or fall to barbarianism will depend on how we continue to deal with these conflicts, and the behaviors we encourage and discourage. It we think all that is needed is good policing, we stay on the path of a police state, and a decline into barbarianism. On the other hand, if we assume education and social pressure for good behavior is the path to take, we have a chance of maintaining our liberty while raising the human potential.

[lamp]

Athena, the idea for this thread did not really derive from a situation that may have happened to me. It was rather an idea which I got when I was noticing something. You can tell to a degree by the way how I formulated my other questions.

 

I noticed that a lot of business men, especially leaders, will rarely crack jokes or be silly, they'll be serious most of the time and maybe crack one or two jokes for spicing up the conversation. Those people usually get respected by the crowd, especially if these people are knowledgeable, wise and skilled, basically if they know what they're doing and if they know it well. In the contrary I've noticed that clowns simply do not get respected, even if they may have the knowledge and skills too, they're simply not the people you'd call when you urgently need somebody for advice.

 

ego, you've great points there, you brought my attention to something which I did not even think about, that "respect is dependent on the social circle you're in", this is true, people around the world respect other people for different reasons. In other countries older people get respected for the simple reason of being old. While in western countries older people are more seen as a superfluous burden.

[DrmDoc]

This is not the sort of dataless navel-gazing that really belongs in psychology & psychiatry. But I'm done complaining.

Respect contemplation not related to psychology? "Dataless"? Isn't this the stuff of behavioral psychology?

 

I'd say respect is about taking someone seriously as a person; i.e. not dismissing them, condescending, etc.

In addition, I would also define respect as the regard and consideration for others that we expect for ourselves.

Edited May 20, 2011 by DrmDoc

[PhDwannabe]

Isn't this the stuff of behavioral psychology?

 

No.

[lemur]

3. We act with integrity. This is beyond don't lie, steal or cheat, and includes being honorable.

While I like most of what you posted, I'm a little hesitant about honor because, in my experience, people use honor as a basis for repressing critical/questioning of authority. I have also seen respect (ab)used this way, but I don't find it difficult to respectfully question authority, whereas I can imagine being labeled dishonorable for doing so, even if my intentions would be respectful and constructive. I do think that honor has been unduly under attack in recent media-portrayals and commentary on things like "honor killings" for daughters/sisters who do not remain chaste before marriage or criticism of the idea that adultery is an assault on a spouse's honor, and not just an expression of a person's freedom to love who they please when they please. I think culture has developed a nasty ability to attack everything by means of portraying it negatively, and by doing so prevents its own values from being subject to critical attention. So while it may be excessive to kill for honor, that doesn't mean that honor is nothing more than an impetus for murder. As usual, I think the problem lies with authoritarian expressions of honor in which there is no room for discussion of the causes and consequences of honor, just demands for its respect. I suppose you could just say that it is dishonorable to abuse honor for reasons such as selfishness, greed, or spite.

[DrmDoc]

No.

Isn't respect a measure of social dominance and isn't dominance integral to the study of social hierarchy and hierarchal behavior? Isn't hierarchal behavior a well studied, data filled subject of behavioral and social psychology? Therefore, indirectly, respect has been the subject of psychological study. If no, could you elaborate further?

Edited May 20, 2011 by DrmDoc

[PhDwannabe]

Isn't respect a measure of social dominance

No (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001).

[DrmDoc]

No (Sidanius & Pratto, 2001).

Although the brevity of your reply speaks volumes, you are wrong. Taken from Google Scholar (Keywords: Dominance and Respect):

 

Hierarchy and social status in Budongo chimpanzees, NE Newton-Fisher - Primates, 2004 - Springer

 

Bullying in prisons: The importance of perceived social status, prisonization, and moral disengagement, CR South… - Aggressive Behavior, 2006 - Wiley Online Library

 

Determinants of adolescent perceptions of maternal and paternal power in the family, GW McDonald - Journal of Marriage and Family, 1979 - JSTOR

 

Developmental pathways in youth sexual aggression and delinquency: Risk factors and mediators, JA Hunter, AJ Figueredo, NM Malamuth… - Journal of family …, 2004 - Springer

The Utilitarian and Deontological Entanglement of Debating Guns, Crime, and Punishment in America, R Weisberg - The University of Chicago Law Review, 2004 - JSTOR

Social status and shaming experiences related to adolescent overt aggression at school, C Åslund, B Starrin, J Leppert… - Aggressive …, 2009 - Wiley Online Library

These articles were among many more with abstracts suggesting an association or interconnectedness between respect and dominance. To suggest otherwise without substantial support is disingenuous--in my opinion.

Edited May 21, 2011 by DrmDoc

[PhDwannabe]

Social dominance, DrmDoc, is a construct. It has a specific operationalization. It's not just a noun and a modifier. You've stumbled into an empirically identified construct--it's clear to me that you didn't know you did so, from your Google Scholaring--which I at first (wrongly) took you to understand. Social dominance (usually fully called Social Dominance Orientation or SDO) is different than "social" (modifier) "dominance" (noun), which we might connect to this wobbly poorly-defined phenomenon of "respect." SDO is in a bit of a different area. I'm not going to take the time to ramble about it. Those articles are talking about a variety of different constructs which make use of the noun "dominance."

 

When you're not conversant in a specific area of literature, and/or when your interaction with social science consists mostly of a priori musing, you run into misunderstandings like these. I here bow out of this increasingly tiresome thread.

[DrmDoc]

Social dominance, DrmDoc, is a construct. It has a specific operationalization. It's not just a noun and a modifier. You've stumbled into an empirically identified construct--it's clear to me that you didn't know you did so, from your Google Scholaring--which I at first (wrongly) took you to understand. Social dominance (usually fully called Social Dominance Orientation or SDO) is different than "social" (modifier) "dominance" (noun), which we might connect to this wobbly poorly-defined phenomenon of "respect." SDO is in a bit of a different area. I'm not going to take the time to ramble about it. Those articles are talking about a variety of different constructs which make use of the noun "dominance."

 

Neither will I; however, I selected the article you previously cited and indeed it does discuss social dominance in a theorethical context. In that article, social status versus social power were discussed as key elements of social dominance. Among other constituent qualities relative to social status, prestige was described and discussed as a key component. A discussion of prestige is, by definition, as discussion of "the level of respect at which one is regarded by others" (American Heritage Dictionary). Rather than a "wobbly poorly-defined phenomenon", respect is a quality of significant social relevance and real psychological import.

 

When you're not conversant in a specific area of literature, and/or when your interaction with social science consists mostly of a priori musing, you run into misunderstandings like these. I here bow out of this increasingly tiresome thread.

Conversant or not, misunderstandings, misperceptions, and misconceptions can and do occur in every discussion where individuals take opposite positions. Even with prior experience and knowledge through research, we can become more conversant in defense of our knowledge base through mature and constructive exchanges rather than witless quips, monosyllabic replies, or subtle insults. I wish you well.

Edited May 22, 2011 by DrmDoc