“It’s not tolerance I’m asking for, it’s respect!” A conceptual framework to differentiate between tolerance, acceptance and (two types of) respect

Due to a rising interest in empirical ‘respect’ research but at the same time a somewhat fuzzy use of the term and its semantically close neighbors, we introduce a conceptual framework. The framework draws on existing philosophical traditions and empirical psychological works alike. It is pointed out that respect, acceptance, and tolerance are all attitudes of a subject towards an object which are not aligned on one dimension, but are concerned with quite different issues. Moreover, we propose that research needs to differentiate between two very different kinds of respect. Whereas appraisal respect, acceptance, and tolerance are attitudinal reflections of a subject’s decisions on certain issues (i.e., on influence, membership, and presence), recognition respect is proposed to be an overarching processing mode, i.e., a general attitude on how to confront others.