Vision is a common metaphor for emotion. When a person feels circumspect, for example, they feel as if they need to look all around them for something as yet unknown. To suspect means to look at something from a new angle because of a nagging sense that not everything is as it first appears to be.
Respect is another emotion like this, sharing the Latin root spect, which refers to the act of looking. When a person feels respect, they feel compelled to look at a person more than once, taking note of worthwhile qualities on a second glance.
Respect is in this sense a form of recognition – a rethinking of one’s estimation of another person’s value. Respect can also be held for a particular idea or perspective, considered separately from the quality of the particular people who hold them.
Like so many emotions that are not acknowledged by the theory of basic emotions, respect can only exist in relationship to something outside the person who feels it. Respect is thus impossible to read through a simple scan of a person’s face or bodily movements. Respect can be demonstrated through outward ritualized gestures, but it can also be held quietly on the inside. In either case, however, the feeling cannot be understood outside of the context of what the person feeling it perceives, not literally with their eyes, but with their heart, or to put it more technically, their subjective cognitive model of the thing or person they respect.
