Admiration
Deep respect and warm approval for someone's qualities.
Admiration is deep respect and warm approval for someone's qualities. The chest opens and attention brightens. You recognise excellence, skill, character, or beauty worth honouring. It motivates learning and helps shape the values people develop.
Admire generously, study quietly
Admiration is the warm recognition of greatness in another. It is one of the most generous emotions because it costs you nothing and gives the other person something rare. Most people receive too little admiration and too much critique. Be the person who says it out loud when you see something excellent. Then, privately, study what you admire. What habits produced it? What disciplines? Admiration that becomes only worship leaves you stuck in the audience. Admiration that becomes inquiry can change your life. Admire openly. Learn quietly. Both at once.
"We admire only what we already obscurely value in ourselves."
— André Gide
Admiration has a distinctive body signature of warm bright attention. The chest opens. The face often shows particular brightness, with smile that arises spontaneously rather than being performed. The eyes engage directly with what is being witnessed. The voice often carries particular warm quality when speaking about or to the admired person. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being lifted by what is being witnessed rather than diminished by comparison. There is no pulling back into self-protection, no sustained activation of comparison; the response is outward toward the qualities being recognised.
Admiration has been studied within research on positive emotions, particularly through Algoe and Haidt's work distinguishing admiration from related states including awe, elevation, and gratitude (Algoe & Haidt, 2009). Their research showed that admiration specifically responds to skill or excellence (rather than virtue, which triggers moral elevation) and produces motivation to emulate or develop similar capacities. Research on positive emotions has consistently shown that admiration contributes to multiple positive outcomes including motivation, learning, and the development of values, partly through its effect on what people choose to pursue and develop.
Admiration arises through specific conditions involving the recognition of excellence in another. Common patterns include:
Admiration is one of the more reliably beneficial positive emotional capacities. The following help.
Allow yourself to recognise excellence
Some people resist admiration, often through patterns of comparison that produce envy instead, or through cultivated cynicism that prevents recognition of excellence. Allowing yourself to actually recognise and feel warmly toward excellence often produces more sustained motivation and learning than maintaining defensive distance. The capacity for admiration tends to develop with practice.
Notice when admiration is becoming envy
The transition from admiration to envy can be subtle but is significant for well-being. When the warm response to excellence has shifted to painful comparison or hostility, the work is often to return to admiration: recognising that another's excellence does not diminish yours, that their having capacity does not take from you. The distinction is workable when noticed.
Use admiration to support your own development
Admiration naturally produces motivation to develop similar capacities. Following this motivation, by engaging with the development of qualities you admire in others, often produces growth that envy-driven competition does not. The motivation that flows from admiration tends to be more sustainable than envy-driven striving.
Distinguish admiration from idealisation
Healthy admiration includes accurate perception of the admired person, including their limits and imperfections. Idealisation specifically removes the limits and imagines the person as more perfect than they are. The idealisation tends to produce eventual disappointment; the realistic admiration can sustain through full perception of the other. Working toward realistic rather than idealised admiration usually produces better outcomes.
If admiration produces painful comparison
Sustained difficulty with admiration without it producing painful envy may signal patterns worth attending to: comparison-based self-worth, sustained inadequacy feelings, particular attachment patterns. The capacity for admiration without envy is widely shared but can be specifically blocked by these patterns. Therapeutic work that addresses self-worth and comparison patterns often makes admiration more accessible without the painful comparison.
"Admiration specifically responds to skill or excellence and produces motivation to emulate or develop similar capacities. The emotion serves important functions in motivation and the development of values."
— A summary of Algoe and Haidt's research on admiration
What is admiration?
Admiration is deep respect and warm approval for someone's qualities. The body responds to recognising excellence, skill, character, or beauty in another with particular warmth and lift. The chest opens. The face shows particular bright attention. There is a quality of being moved by what you are witnessing, of recognising something worth honouring. Admiration specifically refers to recognising and warmly approving of qualities in another, without the painful comparison of envy or the overwhelming quality of awe. The warm approval without painful comparison is essential.
Where do people feel admiration in the body?
Admiration has a distinctive signature of warm bright attention. The chest opens. The face often shows particular brightness, with smile that arises spontaneously rather than being performed. The eyes engage directly with what is being witnessed. The voice often carries particular warm quality when speaking about or to the admired person. The body holds itself in a way that suggests being lifted by what is being witnessed rather than diminished by comparison. There is no pulling back into self-protection, no sustained activation of comparison; the response is outward toward the qualities being recognised.
What's the difference between admiration and envy?
Envy involves wanting what the admired person has, often with painful comparison and sometimes with hostility toward the person. Admiration is warm approval without the painful comparison. A person can admire without envy (recognising excellence without wanting to take it from the other or feeling diminished by it). When admiration has become envy, the felt quality changes substantially: the warmth turns to pain or hostility. The distinction matters because the two emotions have very different effects on well-being and on relationships. The transition from admiration to envy can be subtle but is significant for well-being.
Is it healthy to admire other people?
Yes, in balanced form. Research on admiration has shown it contributes to multiple positive outcomes including motivation, learning, and the development of values. Algoe and Haidt's research showed that admiration specifically produces motivation to emulate or develop similar capacities. The healthy form involves accurate perception of the admired person (including their limits) rather than idealisation, and allows admiration without painful comparison or self-diminishment. When admiration consistently produces envy or painful comparison rather than warm response, the pattern warrants attention; the capacity for admiration without envy is widely shared but can be specifically blocked by certain patterns.
How do you cultivate admiration?
Several practices support the capacity for admiration. Allowing yourself to actually recognise excellence, rather than maintaining defensive distance through cynicism or comparison, tends to develop the capacity with practice. Using admiration to support your own development, since admiration naturally produces motivation to develop similar capacities, often produces sustainable growth. Distinguishing admiration from idealisation supports realistic admiration that can be sustained through full perception of the other. When admiration consistently produces painful comparison rather than warm response, working with the underlying patterns (comparison-based self-worth, inadequacy feelings) often makes admiration more accessible. The capacity for admiration without envy is widely shared and tends to develop with deliberate cultivation.
- Algoe, S. B., & Haidt, J. (2009). Witnessing excellence in action: The 'other-praising' emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 4(2), 105–127. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17439760802650519
Admiration sits in the trust family because of its role in recognising worth in others. It overlaps with respect when the focus is on regard rather than warmth, with moral elevation when virtue rather than skill is involved, with awe when overwhelming responses are present, with envy as the painful comparison form that admiration can shade into, and with what positive psychology research has identified as one of the key emotions in the development of motivation and values.
See where admiration sits among the other 402 emotions.
Open Admiration on the wheel