Hello everyone, this is my fourth blog post for my inquiry project, and my inquiry question is “How do people gain respect from others, and the effects of culture on how one gains respect.”
This is my second round of research, and I will be researching how culture affects how people respect others, and how different cultures affect one’s views on “respectable traits.”
Different cultures develop under different environments and varying circumstances, and the social structure of the culture is what effects how they affect traits that they deem respectable (1). Growing up in China, I had a lot of respect for morals, and people with good morals are always very highly respected, some of the “good moral” traits that Chinese people adore include “benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom, honesty, and loyalty” (2). Growing up learning about all the different countries, the different environments, and the different climates, surely the respectable traits would vary across the globe and between cultures, or that is what I believed before researching deeper into how cultures affect how people respect others. As much as the social climate and the social norms are different in different countries, there are really not a lot of differences when it comes to respectable traits. I tried very hard to find the slightest proof that respect, of all things, is very influenced by the social environment of a culture, but I was wrong, and part of the proof of this is the lack of websites that I am able to reference in my blog post.
Respect is your deepest admiration for people, and this feeling of admiration cannot be simply altered by the environment around you; instead, it is influenced by different individual’s unique experiences in life, and how we perceive those experiences. As we grow older and live a lot more life, our views on respectable traits might change, from respecting the kid who can do the most impressive tricks in elementary school, to respecting the most popular kid in middle school and respecting the most mature student in high school, everyone’s definition of respect varies, and it varies throughout their course of life (3).
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10766356/
- https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2013/11/chinas-traditional-cultural-values-and-national-identity?lang=en
- https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/we-have-different-definitions-respect-ann-van-eron
Hello Scott,
This is very true as people around the world have different traits. Actually, no one has the exact same way of thinking, but how people think can be easily influenced. When I was in elementary school, I thought being mean was the only way of being respected is to be popular. In middle school, if you were athletic and popular, you would be respected. In high school, what respect is really is differs with everyone. One suggestion I would give is to give examples of respected traits from different age groups and countries. Keep up the good work!
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170413-different-nationalities-really-have-different-personalities