What Makes People Feel Respected? Toward an Integrative Psychology of Social Worth

Abstract

People care a great deal about their social worth in other people’s eyes and social worth is implicated as an important factor in a host of social scientific theories. At the same time, social worth phenomena are scattered across diverse literatures under different conceptual labels, with little correspondence between them. In the present article, we attempt to integrate social worth research by focusing on three core questions: (1) What is the meaning of social worth in a particular interaction or relationship? (2) How do people evaluate their social worth in the eyes of their partner? And (3) how do people react when they are credited with different forms of social worth? According to the theoretical framework we propose, the particular meaning of social worth depends on a person’s goals for an interaction, and we draw on interdependence theory to map how different situations afford the activation of different goals. To evaluate their social worth in a partner’s eyes, a person judges whether the role they are accorded by the partner satisfies their own interaction goals. This comparison can yield an affirmation, a disconfirmation, or a violation of the person’s social worth expectations. A person’s reactions to these social worth experiences can be understood as attempts to regulate the situation’s interdependence structure following the partner’s feedback. We review social worth-related research from different research areas to show the framework’s wide applicability and integrative potential.

What makes people feel respected? Toward an integrative psychology of social worth.

“…In a recent study (Rothers & Cohrs, 2022), we explored what makes people feel respected in political discussions with a contrary-minded partner. We measured the extent to which the conversation partner had satisfied a range of interpersonal motives and examined associations between these motive satisfactions and felt (dis)respect.…”

“…The extent to which participants feel valued would serve as the dependent variable. Here, it is important to use “content-free” measures with as little semantic connotations beyond feelings of social worth as possible (see Rothers & Cohrs, 2022).…”

“…For instance, in a study of our own, we found that relatedness (a supposed universal basic motive; Baumeister & Leary, 1995) was barely associated with feelings of respect in discussions when the partner was a stranger. However, when participants had a discussion with someone they were closer with, relatedness and respect were more strongly associated (Rothers & Cohrs, 2022).…”