Linking admiration and adoration to self-expansion: Different ways to enhance one's potential

Abstract

How is admiration different from adoration? We provided one answer to this question by examining the pathways through which admiration and adoration linked to self-expansion in a questionnaire and an experimental (autobiographical recall of emotion episodes) study. Both emotions were associated with increased potential efficacy to accomplish goals (i.e., self-expansion), but different action tendencies accounted for these links. While our emotion inductions did not successfully distinguish between admiration and adoration, we could statistically disentangle their effects through mediator models. In both studies, self-reported admiration linked to self-expansion through the tendency to emulate admired others. Adoration related to self-expansion through the tendency to affiliate with adored others. These findings were obtained after controlling for other emotions in response to the target person (awe, love, hope, benign envy) and mutuality of the relationship. Our findings also suggest that considering specific emotions (rather than undifferentiated positive affect) helps uncover different pathways to self-expansion.

Keywords:

• Admiration
• Adoration
• Worship
• Self-expansion
• Emulation
• Affiliation

We want to thank our participants for devoting time and energy to this project and our research assistants Friederike Krusch, Christina Tegeler, Sascha Völkerling and Jessica Jansen, who helped conduct the studies.

This research was supported by the Cluster “Languages of Emotion” at Free University Berlin, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).

We want to thank our participants for devoting time and energy to this project and our research assistants Friederike Krusch, Christina Tegeler, Sascha Völkerling and Jessica Jansen, who helped conduct the studies.

This research was supported by the Cluster “Languages of Emotion” at Free University Berlin, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).

Notes

¹ The respective two-factor model for the person-specific ADMADOS items showed an acceptable fit to the data, χ²(19) = 51.91, p < .001, RMSEA = .08, CFI = 0.97, TLI = 0.96, which was vastly superior, Δχ²(1) = 273.70, p < .001, to the fit of an alternative one-factor model, χ²(20) = 325.62, p < .001, RMSEA = .22, CFI = 0.75, TLI = 0.64.

² We also ran the mediator model with a variable combining our affiliation measure and the IOS Scale and found that this did not change the findings.

³ The timing of the event differed between the five emotion conditions, χ²(8) = 46.00, p < .001, with the percentage of events within the last month/more than a year ago in each condition being 41.8/30.9% for love, 16.7/42.6% for admiration, 4.1/57.1% for envy, 7.0/64.9% for adoration and 7.5/66.0% for awe. As the timing of the event did not emerge as a significant covariate in the performed analyses, we did not include it in the RANCOVAs or the multiple mediator model.