The Chicken and Egg of Pride and Social Rank


Think, for a moment, about the last time you accomplished something big. How did you feel afterward? Did the achievement change the way you thought about yourself, or the way others see you?

If you’re like most people, you probably felt pride in your accomplishment. Others who learned about your success also probably admired you for it, and your social status may have risen a notch. Indeed, studies show that achievements bring feelings of pride along with increases in social status, and that pride and status are therefore closely related. People who have high social rank tend to feel pride often, whereas those lower in rank feel pride much less.

But what is the cause of this relationship? Do achievements promote both pride and social rank separately, or might feeling pride cause an increase in social rank? Or vice versa?

Perhaps feeling pride following success is reinforcing; pride is a pleasurable emotional experience that motivates people to continue working hard toward status-gaining future successes, with the goal of feeling that pleasurable emotion again. Yet it is also possible that an increase in social rank is a pride-worthy event itself, such that part of why you felt pride after that achievement was because you knew that it increased your status.

Two Kinds of Pride

To answer the chicken and egg question, we need to address the complexity of pride, which is not simply one thing. Instead, pride has two distinct facets, which we call authentic and hubristic. Authentic pride refers to feelings of confidence and fulfillment; this is the “bright side” of pride that makes you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments, but not necessarily superior to others. Hubristic pride, in contrast, refers to feelings of arrogance and egotism; it is the “dark side” of pride that is well known as one of Dante’s seven deadly sins, and is associated with antisocial behaviors like aggression and dishonesty.

And Two Kinds of Status

Interestingly, there are also two distinct ways of attaining status. Prestigious leaders get ahead by earning others’ respect and admiration, whereas dominant leaders forcibly take power, intimidating and threatening would-be followers to ensure they are in control.

We sought to determine the causal direction of the association between pride and social rank—to figure out which comes first—while taking into account the different types of pride and social status.

In the Fall, we asked university students to report their daily feelings of pride and their relative social rank among their peers, and then we asked them these same questions again the following Spring.

Our analyses showed it was a two-way street: both pride and social rank contribute to changes in the other. Students’ feelings of pride in the Fall led to increases in their status by the Spring, and, their status in the Fall led to increased pride experiences by Spring.

Furthermore, each kind of pride was linked in this two-way manner to one kind of social rank, but not the other. Students who reported high levels of authentic pride showed increases in prestige, whereas those who reported high levels of hubristic pride showed increases in dominance. Yet, authentic pride was not associated with any change in dominance, nor was hubristic pride associated with change in prestige. Likewise, individuals with high levels of prestige in the Fall showed increases in authentic but not hubristic pride by the Spring, whereas those who started the Fall high in dominance showed increases in hubristic but not authentic pride by Spring.

Thus, feelings of authentic pride may motivate individuals to work hard and develop important skills—behaviors that ultimately cause others to see them as prestigious. Correspondingly, feelings of hubristic pride may motivate individuals to arrogantly and aggressively take power; their sense of superiority may allow them to dominate others without fear of retaliation or concern about others’ well-being. At the same time, prestigious individuals who earn others’ respect and admiration likely feel authentic pride as a result, and dominant individuals who successfully intimidate others into falling in line are likely to respond with heightened hubristic pride.

The relationship between pride and social rank thus seems to be a feedback loop; pride promotes gains in status, which then lead to increased pride. Climbing the social ladder via dominance or prestige provides the emotional reward of pride, but pride is more than a reward; it is also the impetus underlying the next status gain.  


For Further Reading

Cheng, J. T., Tracy, J. L., & Henrich, J. (2010). Pride, personality, and the evolutionary foundations of human social status. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31(5), 334–347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2010.02.004

Tracy, J. L., Mercadante, E.J., Witkower, Z., & Cheng, J. T. (2020). The evolution of pride and social hierarchy. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 51-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.04.002

Witkower, Z., Mercadante, E. J., & Tracy, J. L. (2021). The chicken and egg of pride and social rank. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211023619
 

Eric Mercadante is a PhD student studying Social/Personality Psychology at the University of British Columbia. He is interested in relationships between stable personality traits and emotional processes, specifically in the context of navigating social hierarchies.

Zak Witkower is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He researches how facial, head, and body movements are used to communicate emotion, personality, and social rank.

Jessica Tracy is a Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and a Sauder Distinguished Scholar. Her research focuses on emotions, self, and nonverbal behavior.

The Pride and Prejudice of Social Identities: Implications for Belonging

A person’s social identity can be a source of ‘pride and prejudice’—that is, both belonging and exclusion. This insight can matter deeply for college students. Racial/ethnic disparities are linked to whether a student feels included on college and university campuses, and in turn to their academic achievement, degree attainment, and even health and well-being. Thus, social identities can be associated with risk of a lower sense of institutional belonging and myriad adverse consequences. Accordingly, solutions to inequalities or efforts to reduce such negative outcomes have frequently targeted social identities.

These efforts have, predictably, commonly targeted stigma associated with social identities and have produced powerful insights for theory and application. However, social identities, even those that place individuals at risk for a lower sense of belonging, are complex because they encompass stigma yet also strengths. Such social identities can function as a source of (1) stigma or prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and marginalization and (2) strengths or pride, resilience, and interdependence—a positive sense of connection to ingroup others. 

Targeting Both Stigma and Strengths

My recent research provides evidence that targeting stigma as well as strengths tied to social identities can afford multiple pathways to belonging and to solving varied inequalities.  

Andy Lin and I reviewed research in social, developmental, and educational psychology that demonstrates how the combination of ‘stigma and strengths’ shapes social identities for Latino/a/x and African Americans. Then, we showed how such stigma and strengths can be associated with multiple pathways to belonging, and in turn positive long-term consequences across academic and well-being outcomes.

We were able to analyze the actual text of written demands which had been submitted to administrators by college students from underrepresented racial/ethnic minority backgrounds and their allies. These demands were from students attending 80 colleges and universities, mostly in the United States. The demands were tied to nationwide and international protests on college campuses, and represented explicit calls for more inclusive college campuses. In the text of these demands we looked at whether this form of collective action, which was aimed at fostering a greater sense of belonging for racial/ethnic minority students on college campuses, referred to both stigma and strengths.

Indeed, demands across campuses overwhelmingly called for changes that would both reduce stigma and promote strengths. These included calls for transparent procedures for reporting and investigating discrimination. The demands also included requests for funding for ethnic studies classes, and physical spaces on campus that celebrate the cultural, heritage, history, and contemporary experiences of racial/ethnic minority groups.     

Pride and Prejudice Confirmed

Following this, we directly examined Latino/a/x and African American college students’ experiences of stigma and strengths on their campuses, using the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen—containing almost 2,000 Latino/a/x and African American college students at 27 U.S. colleges and universities. We defined experiences of stigma as prejudice and experiences of strengths as pride.

Students’ ‘pride and prejudice’ experiences definitely represented two pathways to belonging and to feeling connected meaningfully to their school. Pride experiences—such as taking a class in Latino/a/x or African American Studies—positively predicted institutional belonging, and in turn academic and well-being outcomes such as graduation rates, grade point average, depression, health, and missed school days. At the same time, prejudice experiences such as hearing a derogatory racial/ethnic remark were negatively associated with institutional belonging, and in turn the academic and well-being measures.

These results have implications for science and society. Researchers need to engage the complexities tied to social identities including the ways in which the same identity can be a source of stigma and strength. Administrators and leaders at schools or workplaces can implement policies and practices that reduce stigma and promote strengths to foster institutional belonging and in turn benefit a variety of academic and health outcomes.


For Further Reading

Brannon, T. N., Fisher, P. H., & Greydanus, A. J. (2020). Selves as solutions to social inequalities: Why engaging the full complexity of social identities is critical to addressing disparities. Cambridge University Press.

Brannon, T. N., & Lin, A. (2020). “Pride and prejudice” pathways to belonging: Implications for inclusive diversity practices within mainstream institutions. American Psychologist. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000643

Massey, D. S., Charles, C. Z., Lundy, G. F., & Fischer, M. J. (2006). The source of the river: The social origins of freshmen at America's selective colleges and universities. Princeton University Press.
 

Tiffany N. Brannon is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research examines socio-cultural interventions that leverage social identities as well as intra- and intergroup interactions to impact social inequalities.

 

 

A Tale of Two Prides

Recently, President Joe Biden gave his inaugural address, attempting to unify a divided nation and place an emphasis on love and compassion. He asked, “What are the common objects we love that define us as Americans?” His list was long: Opportunity. Security. Liberty. Dignity. Respect. Honor. And yes—he said—the truth.

One item left off his list—indeed, left out of his whole speech—was the idea of pride. It’s an interesting omission for me to realize, as a pride researcher, but one that perhaps alludes to the difficulty when using such a term. Pride can be seen as a good thing (pride in our country, and maybe unity in this shared identity), but pride can also be viewed quite negatively. As the classic saying goes, “pride goes before a fall.”

This duality has intrigued philosophers for centuries, and has entertained psychology researchers for almost two decades. In 2004, Jessica Tracy and Rick Robins offered their two-facet theory of pride (which they further clarified in 2007), suggesting that there might be two types of pride, and the confusion is that our language uses the same term for both. To fix this issue, they provided more precise labels: authentic pride is a genuine experience of pride, felt due to one’s accomplishments or successes (I did something great!); hubristic pride is when one feels pride in one’s innate abilities, regardless of context (I’m such a great person!). (“Hubris” comes from Greek tragedy, when a person’s defiance of the gods leads to their downfall.)

Many researchers latched onto this useful dichotomy (so much confusion, cleared up!) and began studying pride in this way, using a standard self-report measure created by Tracy and Robins.

The questionnaire is really simple, as you will see from some example items. You simply have to ask yourself, in general, how accomplished do you feel? successful? confident?

Then, you ask yourself, how snobbish do you feel? arrogant? pompous?

Your answers to the first give you information on your authentic pride, aka AP. Answers to the second set give you your hubristic pride score, aka HP.

With such terminology, it’s pretty easy for anyone to see that AP seems like a generally good way to feel, and HP has quite negative connotations (does anyone really want to feel snobbish?). What I wanted to know was what the research had to say about just how good AP is, and just how not-so-great HP is, in terms of people’s daily lives. That is, if people feel a lot of AP, do they also show other positive personality traits or ways of thinking? In contrast, do people high in HP show more negative patterns?

To answer this question, Rick Robins and I located all of the relevant research, collected all of the results, and figured out how the two kinds of pride differed.

We conducted 103 analyses on 94 different studies, which were based on 64,698 participants (not to brag, but I am proud of the work!). Taken together, they paint a clear picture of the contrast between AP and HP.

When a person experiences a lot of authentic pride, it’s likely that they also experience a number of other healthy traits: self-esteem, positive emotion, agreeableness, self-efficacy, and feelings of prestige and merit. They also show less likelihood of depression, anxiety, loneliness, and aggression. In contrast, when someone has high hubristic pride, they show much more negative patterns. They experience more negative emotions, anxiety, and aggression, while experiencing less self-esteem, patience, and self-control.

This work relies solely on correlations, so we can’t know if AP and HP cause these patterns of traits. Nor does this work necessarily speak to the accuracy of the two-facet model, or the accuracy of the self-report measures. But it does strongly suggest that parents everywhere are on the right track: authentic pride is a good thing—something we should want our children to feel. But just feeling proud of yourself without real basis -- and communicating that hubristic pride to others—might not be psychologically healthy or a winning style in the long run.


For Further Reading

Dickens, L. R., & Robins, R. W. (2020). Pride: A meta-analytic project. Emotion. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000905

Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Putting the self into self-conscious emotions: A theoretical model. Psychological Inquiry, 15, 103–125. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1502_01

Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The psychological structure of pride: A tale of two facets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92, 506-525. DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.506
 

Leah Dickens is an assistant professor of psychology at Kenyon College and an associate editor of Character & Context. She studies emotions, focusing primarily on pride and gratitude.

Desirable Biases: People Making Flattering Statements About Their Loved Ones Are Seen as Biased but Good

Here are some sentences that will surely come across as biased: My wife is the prettiest woman in the world. My son is the smartest kid in school. My grandma makes the best chocolate cake ever.

Compare them to these sentences: My wife is not the ugliest woman in the world, but she's also not the prettiest. My son is not the dumbest kid in school, but he's also not the smartest. My grandma's chocolate cake is so-so; not horrible, but not great either.

For which set of statements would you say the person making them is more biased? I'm guessing the first one. But for which would you say that the person making the statements is more likeable? I'm guessing, also the first one.

In a set of studies I conducted with João Amaral, we documented this relationship between perceived bias and likeability. Participants perceived people who made flattering statements about their loved ones as biased but quite likeable, whereas people who did not praise their loved ones were perceived as unbiased but not at all likeable.

This relation between perceived bias and likeability only holds for people speaking of their loved ones, not people speaking of themselves. In one of our studies, participants read about similar flattering statements that people made about themselves ("I am the most beautiful person in the world") or about their loved ones ("My partner is the most beautiful person in the world"). Self-flattering statements were regarded as biased and dislikeable, whereas statements flattering others were regarded as equally biased but likeable.

Why do people dislike self-enhancement but like other-enhancement? If the person is self-enhancing, stating that she is smarter or more beautiful than most other people, then she comes across as conceited. Moreover, people hearing that statement might feel implicated in the comparison: "She might be stating she is smarter or more beautiful than I am". This is less likely when people hear someone making flattering statements about another person (other-enhancing), particularly a loved one. Those statements convey liking of the other person, which causes a favorable impression on observers.

Another interesting result in our studies was the distinction between bias and sincerity. Bias need not be seen as insincere. Indeed, participants reading about people who made flattering statements about their loved ones were able to distinguish between the truth of the statements in the eyes of the beholder ("they really think their partner is the most beautiful person in the world!") and the truth in the eyes of most other people, including their own ("their partner is quite likely not the most beautiful person in the world"). Flattering statements were regarded positively even though they were regarded as biased (not true in the eyes of other people), as long as they were regarded as sincere (true in the eyes of the person making the statement).

In fact, the less consensual the flattering statement was (for instance, when only the authors of the statements saw their loved ones in such a positive light), the more favorable it was regarded. The reason for this relates to consensus and attribution: If everyone thinks the person's partner is indeed beautiful, then the person's statement says little about them and more about the beautiful person ("this person must be really beautiful"). In contrast, assessments that are not consensual say more about the person making them ("this person must really like their partner").

This research suggests that there is more than perceived truth to what people say, and what they are judged for—there are also inferred feelings, values, and character traits. These perceived biases might tell us that a person's perceptions and beliefs about the world are distorted, but that their heart is in the right place.


For Further Reading

Mata, A., & Amaral, J. (2022). Desirable Biases: Self-enhancement is seen as biased and bad, other-enhancement is seen as biased but good. Social Cognition, 40(4), 317-335. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2022.40.4.317

Hoorens, V., Pandelaere, M., Oldersma, F., & Sedikides, C. (2012). The hubris hypothesis: You can self‐enhance, but you'd better not show it. Journal of Personality, 80(5), 1237-1274. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2011.00759.x


André Mata is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon. His research interests include social cognition, judgment and decision-making, motivated reasoning, and metacognition.

Guilted into Sustainability?

Feeling guilty is a common human experience. While people may not particularly enjoy this feeling, it can be a powerful motivator. Even the mere prospect of feeling guilty can be enough to make us behave in particular ways.

Imagine that you're driving and need to change lanes. You can either cut off the driver in the car slightly behind you in the next lane or wait for that person to pass and merge behind them. You debate your options. With the former, you imagine that twinge of guilt you might feel after cutting the person off. This anticipated guilt alone might be enough to make you choose the nicer option.

Whether you're just anticipating it or actually experiencing it, guilt often pushes us to behave in certain ways. Our research examines how feeling guilty versus proud—either in anticipation or actually—can impact our sustainability actions. 

While at first blush they may seem different, guilt has a lot in common with pride. As self-conscious emotions (involving self-reflection), both pride and guilt should motivate good behavior following—or in anticipation of—events for which we feel responsible. 

However, the relationship between these emotions and our behavior is complicated. For example, rather than pushing us towards our goals, pride can sometimes make us complacent. Consider a workplace example: you're getting ready to share a new project idea with your boss for feedback. This should motivate you to increase your effort in order to earn her positive feedback—and the pride that accompanies it.

Let's say that scenario comes to pass: your boss showers you with praise. You feel proud of yourself and continue your effort. However, you may not be motivated to increase your effort—because you're already doing swell! You may even relax and decide it's time to focus on other goals. In this example, anticipating feeling proud spurs more effort than actually feeling proud.

So what can we make of this? Is it just the anticipation of guilt (or pride) that drives behavior, rather than actually experiencing it?

This is what we set out to answer.

Guilt, Pride, Feedback, and Sustainability Intentions

In our research, we put all these ingredients together to focus on sustainability-related behaviors—such as limiting air conditioning use or turning off lights at home. In one study, 531 adults completed a home energy footprint quiz online, which included questions about average monthly utility bills, unplugging devices not in use, etc. Then, each person received one of the following messages: anticipated negative feedback, anticipated positive feedback, experienced negative feedback, experienced positive feedback, or no feedback.

Whereas the 'actual feedback' groups received feedback purportedly based on their quiz responses, the 'anticipation' groups saw feedback and were asked to imagine how they would feel if they received that feedback in the future. We designed negative messages to evoke guilt ("Your home energy use is more wasteful, carbon-heavy, and unsustainable than most other people"), and positive feedback to evoke pride. All participants reported how guilty and proud they felt, and indicated how willing they were to perform a set of sustainable behaviors (conserve water, turn off devices not in use).

In a second, similar study, 972 adults voted—or anticipated voting—to support one of two companies based on vague company mission statements. Then, participants received feedback about their real or anticipated choice based on the company's environmental practices (such as,  "You chose to support Company X. This company has a smaller/bigger carbon footprint than other similar companies…"). As in our first study, we designed feedback about choosing the "bad" or "good" company to evoke feelings of guilt or pride. We entered all participants into a drawing for a $25 bonus payment, which they could keep or donate any portion of to an environmental organization if they won.

Contrary to expectations, the effects of pride versus guilt on motivating sustainability behaviors did not depend on whether emotions were anticipated or experienced. However, we saw differences in guilt versus pride. Critically, results suggest that it is not about whether the emotion is anticipated or experienced, but rather the context in which it is evoked.

Study 1, which offered feedback on a range of behaviors constituting one's lifestyle, found that people who felt guiltier were more willing to act sustainably, whereas those who felt more proud were not. In Study 2, feedback was based on a one-time vote rather than a pattern of behavior. Under these circumstances, both pride and guilt increased willingness to behave sustainably and donate bonus payments.

Thus, guilt seems important in motivating behavior change, while pride can work only sometimes—like for a single past behavior such as choosing to support a company, but not a broader pattern of behavior or lifestyle.


For Further Reading

Brosch, T. (2021). Affect and emotions as drivers of climate change perception and action: A review. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 42, 15–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.02.001

Hurst, K., & Sintov, N.D. (2022). Guilt consistently motivates pro-environmental outcomes while pride depends on context. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8, 101776. /doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2022.101776

Shipley, N. J., & van Riper, C. J. (2022). Pride and guilt predict pro-environmental behavior. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 79, 101753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101753


Nicole Sintov is Associate Professor of Behavior, Decision-making, and Sustainability in the Ohio State University's School of Environment and Natural. She studies the roles of identity and information processing in sustainable consumption contexts.

Kristin Hurst is Assistant Professor of Sustainability in the School of Earth Systems and Sustainability at Southern Illinois University. Her work focuses on how identity, emotions and social interactions influence pro-environmental behaviors.

When Positive Emotion Is Bad and Negative Emotion Is Good

Emotions inform a lot of our behavior. We experience fear seeing a mouse in the living room and so we try to escape it by jumping onto a chair. We are angry at our romantic partner and so we fight and yell. We experience interest learning something new and so we engage and try to learn more. 

There are many times when positive emotions fuel our motivation. For example, a college student who feels more positive about her major is more likely to study for her classes. However, this is not always the case. Many people also experience a phenomenon called coasting—they reduce their effort on a task after feeling particularly optimistic. For example, a student who feels good about his progress with studying may reward himself on the following day by having a relaxing break time.

Our recent research shows that you're not alone if you find yourself struggling to consistently put effort in after working effectively on a previous day. We tracked college students' feelings and effort toward their academic goals every day for either five or fourteen days. Each day, students reported their feelings toward their academic goals (excited, interested, distressed, upset) and how much time they spent on them.

Our participants behaved like your home thermostat would: those who felt positive about the progress they made toward their academic goals tended to spend less time working on those goals the very next day. When students felt negative about their academic goal progress, they increased the time they spent on those goals the next day.

Pride Will Particularly Lead You to Coast on the Next Day

People experience many different positive emotions, such as enjoyment, enthusiasm, or interest. Do all these positive emotions lead to coasting? Our research showed that pride was the emotion that led to coasting. Pride is an emotion that arises from looking back on past progress or past achievement—whether accomplished that day, or a long time ago. In contrast, enjoyment arises from the current activities a person is engaging in, and enthusiasm arises from looking forward to upcoming events. In our findings, people were more likely to coast when they felt positively about the progress they had made.

Some People Can Use Negative Emotions to Fuel Their Motivation

Negative emotions can fuel effort, but not for everyone. Only students who reported having high self-control increased the time they spent on academic goals after feeling negative emotions the prior day. When students were not equipped with self-control skills, feeling negative emotions, particularly shame about their academic progress, led to spending less time on academic tasks the next day. These results suggest that students with higher self-control tend to cope with their negative emotions more productively.

Coasting Can Be Detrimental to Goal Achievement, but It Can Also Serve a Function

Coasting might sound bad, but it can also play a functional role. For example, most students take several courses a semester while also pursuing social goals to create and maintain friendships. If each of these goals is important, it is not wise to consistently prioritize one and overlook others. Positive emotions can help people manage this challenge by signaling when time and resources can be diverted from one goal to another. That is, positive emotions may signal to the student that "Okay, you're doing great in your history class. Now it's time to focus on improving your understanding in your math course." Indeed, some research has support this idea. For example, after reducing their effort toward weight loss goals, people often expend more effort toward other competing goals.

Sometimes it seems like we're held captive to our emotions, responding just as they direct us to, without being able to take control of them or our behavior. But, knowing how emotions influence our behavior can also help us leverage their powerful effects. Ernest Hemingway, one of the most prolific novelists of the 20th century, enjoyed fishing on the Gulf Stream after writing many words for his novel on a previous day. At the same time, Hemingway remarked once that he kept this daily record of the number of words he produced "so as not to kid" himself.

Hemingway must have been a master at self-regulating his writing goals; he strategically attempted to regulate his coasting or effort. Just as it was useful for Hemingway, we hope that knowing your potential for coasting after feeling good can help you strategically pursue all of your important long-term goals.


For Further Reading

Seo, E., & Patall, E. A. (2021). Feeling proud today may lead people to coast tomorrow: Daily intraindividual relations between emotion and effort in academic goal striving. Emotion, 21(4), 892-897. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000752


Eunjin Seo is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Psychology and the Population Research Center at the University of  Texas at Austin. Eunjin's research seeks to understand the interplay between motivation, achievement, and well-being during adolescence to improve adolescents' trajectories on the path to adulthood. 

Erika A. Patall is an Associate Professor of Education and Psychology in the Rossier School of Education at University of Southern California. Her interests are in student motivation, motivating educational practices, and the application of research synthesis methods in education.

Pride: Strength or Sin? The Impact of Nonverbal Displays of Pride on Hiring Decisions

Picture this. You’re sitting in a job interview talking to someone who will help determine whether or not you get the job. They start asking you about something on your resume – a project you’re particularly proud of, one that you worked really hard on. You can’t help it: you start to lift your head a little higher, sit up straight, pull back your shoulders, puff out your chest. But will this nonverbal display of pride actually help you get the job?

It might. At the University of British Columbia’s Emotion & Self Lab, Jessica Tracy studies nonverbal expressions of pride. Her research shows that displays of pride like these automatically communicate high status, and being perceived as high status by your interviewer could certainly help you get the job.

But her new research shows that it’s not always that simple. In fact, displays of pride can sometimes backfire. To understand why, think about how you might perceive someone walking around looking prideful. Do you see them as someone self-assured and agreeable? Are they well-liked, with many close friends? Or do they swagger around seeming aggressive and narcissistic, with problematic relationships and seemingly few close friends?

Tracy describes how “authentic pride,” leads to the former outcomes, while “hubristic pride” leads to the latter. And whether or not nonverbal displays of pride are interpreted by perceivers as authentic or hubristic determines whether this pride is helpful or harmful in job interviews. In one study, participants were asked to watch recorded videos of job applicants displaying pride, rate whether they were seeing authentic or hubristic pride, and determine whether or not they would hire this applicant for the job. When participants perceived the pride as authentic, they were likely to hire them, but when participants perceived the same videos as full of hubristic pride, they were unlikely to hire them. And researchers have yet to determine exactly what makes a perceiver interpret this display of pride as authentic or hubristic. In fact, it doesn’t seem like people are very good at reliably distinguishing between authentic and hubristic pride.

So, what to do in that job interview? It seems like even if you have good reason to be proud of your accomplishments, you might want to try and dial back your nonverbal display of pride. Because displaying pride is risky: you never know if such a display will be perceived as a strength or a sin.


Written By: Kari Leibowitz. Kari Leibowitz is a 4th year PhD student in social psychology and a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow. Kari works in the Stanford Mind & Body Lab and her research involves leveraging psycho-social forces to improve healthcare experiences and outcomes.

Session: “Hot Sh*t or Piece of Sh*t? The Directly Opposing Impact of Pride Displays on Social Judgments and Decision-Making,” part of symposium, Nonverbal Expression of Positive Emotion: New Advances and Social Functions, held Saturday, February 9, 2019

SpeakerJessica Tracy, Emotion & Self Lab, University of British Columbia

LGBT Pride Month: Members Discuss Their Research

In recognition of June as LGBT Pride month, SPSP interviewed four members whose research focuses on the LGBTQ+ population. Enoch Leung, Eric Russell, Florien Cramwinckel, and Harrison Oakes shared how they came to be interested in their current areas of research, talked about their research and findings, and shared the relevance of their work to LGBT Pride month. 

Enoch Leung

Enoch recalls growing up as a gay, Asian-Canadian male attending a Christian high school without the presence of students who identified as LGBTQ+, and the isolation and frustration he felt. He notes, “Taking my own experiences into account, I wanted to become a researcher or be in a position where I could help current students to feel more comfortable in their school, and not feel the way I felt. I realized that students who identify as LGBTQ+ endure significantly higher amounts of victimization and a negative school climate. I wanted to look into practical solutions and positive support systems to minimize such negative consequences.”

Enoch’s research ties into a moment in time when people around the world show support for LGBTQ+ individuals, which can demonstrate to students that no one is alone, and that there are supportive allies.

Eric Russell

Eric initially pursued this research for his undergraduate honors thesis. He states, “I was interested in understanding why straight women easily gravitate toward gay men as friends. After witnessing many of these close friendships on television, in the media, and in my own life, I thought to myself: ‘there HAS to be something deeper going on here…’ So, I took it upon myself to create the first experiment to examine the social psychological benefits that exist within women’s friendships with gay men.”

To date, Eric has conducted more than 15 studies examining women’s friendships with gay men, and many of his findings have supported the general hypothesis that because gay men are neither sexually interested in women nor in competition with women for the same mates, women can build trust and rapport with gay men very quickly in their relationships.

His research may yield insight into the factors that make heterosexual individuals supportive allies of the LGBT community.

Florien Cramwinckel

Florien has always been fascinated by prejudice and discrimination. Additionally, she comments, “I have been working as a volunteer for an LGBT interest group for several years. In this capacity, I have provided hundreds of sexual diversity intervention training to thousands of young people in the Netherlands. As a researcher, I have become more and more interested in also critically investigating the effectiveness of these programs.”

She hopes to be able to contribute to LGBT acceptance by increasing the effectiveness of prejudice interventions. 

Harrison Oakes

The theoretical grounding of Harrison’s current work comes from sociology, specifically Eric Anderson’s (2009) Inclusive Masculinity Theory. One particularly influential research report Harrison came across was Mark McCormack’s 2011 ethnographic study of high school boys in England. McCormack reported that, across a 5-month period of regular observations, he witnessed no acts of homophobia.

Harrison notes, “I was shocked by McCormack’s report, not only because it contrasted so strongly with my own experiences of homophobic bullying in high school, but also because it contradicted the reality I repeatedly encountered in my previous academic and activist work on bullying. Intrigued, my supervisor, Dr. Richard Eibach, and I began discussing the implications of a homophobia-free social environment for men, which eventually lead us to the question of whether such social environments might weaken the perceived association between gender atypicality in men and being gay.”

Harrison’s work suggests that eradicating homophobia frees up men, regardless of sexuality, to express all aspects of themselves, whether or not they align with traditional notions of masculinity.
 

Thank you to Enoch, Eric, Florien, and Harrison for sharing their personal stories and information about their research. You can learn more about LGBT Pride Month by viewing information from the Library of Congress, PBS, and the SPSP blog.