Admiration is thought to have essential functions for social interaction: it inspires us to learn from excellent models, to become better people, and to praise others and create social bonds. In intergroup relations, admiration for other groups leads to greater intergroup contact, cooperation, and help. Given these implications, it is surprising that admiration has only been researched by a handful of authors. In this article we review the literature, focusing on the definition of admiration, links to related emotions, measurement, antecedents, (...) and associated behaviors. We propose a conceptual model of admiration that highlights admiration’s function for approaching and emulating successful models, thus contributing to social learning at the interpersonal level and to cultural transmission at the group and societal level. (shrink)

Conflict is neither necessary nor sufficient for the existence of groups. First, the existence of mutually supporting, rather than antagonistic, interactants is sufficient to constitute a “social group.” Second, conflict does not necessarily mark group boundaries but can also exist within an ingroup. Third, psychological representations of social groups do not only trace, but also perpetuate the existence of groups.

We argue that general social psychological mechanisms can account for prosocial behavior and cooperative norms without the need for punishing Big Gods. Moreover, prosocial religions often do not prevent conflict within their religious groups. Hence, we doubt whether Big Gods and prosocial religions are more effective than alternative identities in enhancing high-level cooperation.