The initiation of this group is prompted by a noticeable discrepancy between the modest level of academic interest in adoration and admiration and their factual importance. While those two affects play an important role in religious contexts, popular culture and many other sociocultural areas, they have been neglected by psychology, modern aesthetics and poetics.

The Junior Research Group studies these emotions from the point of view of comparative literature, psychology and sociology:

• "The German Hymn" (Windrich)

The definition of the hymn as a genre poses yet unsolved problems for literary studies. This study examines whether there are sufficiently reliable indicators of lyrical expression or literary modelling of admiration and adoration, and how these affects might be considered as criteria for the sought definition.

• "The Role of Adoration and Admiration in Life Composition" (Schindler)

Based on psychological theories of emotion, adoration and admiration are investigated in their function as guidelines for how to lead one’s life. On the one hand, we will study interindividual differences in how and how often the two emotions are experienced. On the other hand, we are interested in how the two emotions help form an identity, define personal goals and ideals, and how they are related to a person’s general well-being.

• "Charisma and Sacralisation Strategies" (Zink)

This sociological examination of the two emotions focuses on their function with regard to postmodern forms of the sacred. The analysis concentrates on cultic forms of expressing adoration and admiration as well as on their impact on the construction of individual and collective identity.

Publications

Schindler, I., Zink, V., Windrich, J., Menninghaus, W. (2013). Admiration and adoration: Their different ways of showing and shaping who we are. Cognition and Emotion 27 (1). 85-118.

Windrich, J. (2012). Götter im Zwielicht. Zur Hymnendichtung des jungen Goethe. POETICA 44 (1-2). 143-179.

Windrich, J. (2012). Goethes blinde Hymne. Bewunderung und Verehrung in Wandrers Sturmlied. Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 86 (1). 27-63.