Effect Mechanism Of Admiration On Individual Self-improvement

Admiration is a kind of feeling which is aroused by person whose ability or virtue is beyond the standard level.This kind of feeling has wide influnce on individual motivation and behavior.The previous studies have shown that admiration helps promote individual self-improvement motivation or tendency.Young college students are the backbone of the social development,so it is of great significance to stimulate their sense of admiration and promote them to improve themselves constantly for the individual,society and nation.Why could the admiration promote individual self-improvement tendency,and what kind of psychological process does the individual experience when that happens? Moreover,whether do the admiration for ability and admiration for virtue have different effect mechanism on self-improvement tendency? For enriching the theory of moral emotion and cultivate the improtant talents who are more virtuous and excellent,it is full of great theoretical value and practical significance to explore and understand how admiration promote individual self-improvement tendency and what kind of effect mechanism works in there.This study examines the effect mechanism of admiration on individual self-improvement tendency by two different affective priming methods,priming by materials and priming by recalling.In this study,admiration is divided into admiration for ability and admiration for virtue,so it parallelly examines the different effect mechanism that the two different admiration have on self-improvement tendency.First of all,in the preliminary experiments,we design several priming materials,and select the best one as priming material in the follow-up studies.Then,we adopt the experimental method and questionnaire method and evoke the admiration by materials,in the first study,we investigate the influence of admiration on individual self-improvement tendency;in the second study,we explore whether there is a mediation effect of emulation motivation or affiliation motivation between the effect of admiration on individual self-improvement tendency;in the first experiment of the third study,we investigate whether the mediation effect of emulation motivation is moderated by goal relevance and goal accessibility in the influence of admiration on individual self-improvement tendency.Finally,in the second experiment of the third study,the recalling method is used to induce the admiration,andwe investigate whether the same conclusion could be reached under different priming methods.By statistic analysis,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)Compared with the priming way of material,the priming way of recalling can better induce the subjects' feelings of admiration.(2)Admiration for ability can promote the individual ability self-improvement tendency;and adimiration for virtue can promote the individual virtue self-improvement tendency.(3)The effect of admiration on self-improvement tendency is mediated by both emulation motivation and affiliation motivation.(4)In the effect of admiration for ability on ability self-improvement tendency,the mediating effect of emulation motivation is moderated by the goal relevance.In the group with low goal relevance,the influence of admiration for ability on the emulation motivation is greater.(5)In the effect of admiration for virtue on virtue self-improvement tendency,the mediating effect of emulation motivation is moderated by the goal relevance.In the group with high goal relevance,the influence of admiration for virtue on the emulation motivation is greater.(6)In the effect of admiration for ability on ability self-improvement tendency,the mediating effect of emulation motivation is not significantly moderated by the goal accessibility.(7)In the effect of admiration for virtue on virtue self-improvement tendency,the mediating effect of emulation motivation is moderated by the goal accessibility.In the group with high goal accessibility,the influence of admiration for virtue on the emulation motivation is greater.