Admiration and adoration have been considered as emotions with the power to change people, yet our knowledge of the specific nature and function of these emotions is quite limited. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we present a prototype approach to admiration and what has variously been labelled adoration, worship, or reverence. Both admiration and adoration contribute to the formation of personal and collective ideals, values, and identities, but their workings differ. We offer a detailed theoretical account of commonalities and differences in the appraisal patterns and action tendencies associated with the two emotions. This analysis reveals that admiration motivates the internalisation and emulation of ideals embodied by an outstanding role model. Adoration motivates adherence to the teachings and expectations of a meaning maker and benefactor perceived as superhuman or sacred. Thus, the primary function of admiration is to promote individual learning and change, whereas adoration primarily serves to bind communities together.
Key elements of discourse on the recent economic crisis are attributions of crisis responsibility. Such attributions are assumed to have consequences for audiences' thoughts and actions in domains relevant to the crisis. Although studies have suggested ways to conceptualize attributions of responsibility, their effects on social action remain poorly understood. This essay develops an empirically grounded theoretical model and methodological tool to reconstruct ideal-typical attributions of responsibility from discourse along the dimensions of attribution targets and attributed logics of action. It further proposes that combinations of these ideal types constitute affective framings that influence how the crisis is perceived and how an audience may act in crisis relevant domains.
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