 Furthermore, the Confucians very much appreciated the power of models to inspire, to make one want to transcend one’s present self. The psychologist Jonathan Haidt (2003) has given empirical evidence for an emotion he calls “elevation,” which is something like awe and admiration upon contemplating the morally admirable. The Analects, in fact, has been read as a record of how a group of men gathered around a teacher with the power to elevate, and as a record of how this group created a culture in which goals of self-transformation were treated as collaborative projects. These people not only discussed the nature of self-cultivation but enacted it as a relational process in which they supported one another, reinforced their common goals, and served as checks on each other in case they went off the path, the dao. They were each other’s situational influences. See Sarkissian, 2010 for the argument that Confucius shows how one can turn the power of situations on people’s attitudes and behavior toward positive ends; if situations can influence people, one can through small details of comportment and attitude be a situational influence on others that tilts things toward a better course.