Respect and admiration differentially activate the anterior temporal lobe

Admiration and respect are positive social emotions often experienced when recognizing excellent behavior in another person. Although both strongly rely on appraisal of behavior, admiration focuses on the admirable behavior of a person, while respect focuses on the person as a whole. The evaluation and interpretation of the social behavior of another person are dependent on semantic memory. Social semantic knowledge is represented in the anterior temporal lobe (ATL), and ATL activity is modulated by conceptual details of semantic knowledge. As respect requires evaluation of not only excellent behavior but also of the person as a whole, we hypothesized that the ATL is differentially activated by admiration and respect. To test our hypothesis, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments. We presented participants with vignettes describing admirable behavior of fictitious characters and asked them to imagine and report how they would normally feel when encountering the situation described in the vignettes, i.e., admiration or respect and its intensity. A part of the left ATL was more strongly modulated by the intensity of respect than of admiration. Although admiration and respect are often considered to be closely related, our results indicate that the neural substrates underlying these emotions are different.