Being two proud is a global trait

When it comes to pride, there are two ways about it, researchers have found out recently. While positive pride helps self-esteem, the conceited one is degenerative

Two researchers are probably walking a little taller these days, puffing out their chests, maybe tilting their heads back and smiling slightly.

If they are looking a little smug, perhaps, it is because their recent studies on the nature of pride have added small but important pieces to a psychological puzzle.

Among their conclusions, published in a review recently in Current Directions in Psychological Science, 'pride' appears to be a universal, human emotion and it comes in two flavours: positive and arrogant.

Felt by everyone
Jessica Tracy, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and Richard Robins, a University of California, Davis, (UC Davis) psychology professor, suggest that pride is a cross-cultural phenomenon - that even remote-living tribal cultures know it when they see it - and that humans recognise two distinct types of pride: justifiable pride and arrogant or conceited pride.

They also found that people who feel justifiable pride are likely to be more extroverted and conscientious, whereas those who feel conceited pride tend to be narcissistic and attribute their success to their innate abilities rather than their personal efforts.

Universal emotion
To test their hypothesis that pride is a universal emotion, Tracy and Robins asked 40 members of a tribal group in Burkina Faso, west Africa, to review photos of Westerners and Africans expressing various emotions, including pride.

The subjects, 20 men and 20 women aged 20 to 75, had little or no exposure to Western culture (for example, they did not recognise photos of George W. Bush, Tom Cruise or Michael Jordan) and were able to identify pride among photos of anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness and shame.

Their recognition of pride was perhaps a hair higher than all other emotions except for happiness and surprise.

Other studies also suggest pride is universal, Tracy says. For example, researchers have found that pride is first exhibited by children around two and a half to three years and can be reliably recognised by children as young as four.

In a series of studies that canvassed more than 2,000 students at UC Davis, the scientists found the most concrete evidence to date that expressions of pride are generally perceived either positively, as a state related to an accomplishment (termed 'authentic pride'), or negatively, as one caused by arrogance or conceit (so-called 'hubristic pride').

The responses tended to cluster around two broad categories: achievement and arrogance.

Tracy and Robins found that students who scored high in authentic pride also demonstrated high self-esteem, whereas those who scored high in hubristic or arrogant pride tended to be narcissistic and prone to feelings of shame as measured by the personality scales.

Charles Darwin put the study of pride on the psychological map in 1872, when he said: "Of all the complex emotions, pride, perhaps, is the most plainly expressed ... a proud man exhibits his sense of superiority over others by holding his head and body erect."

Under-recognised role
But since then, the preponderance of research in the area of emotion has centred on primal emotions, such as happiness, sadness and fear.

Nevertheless, pride is an important line of psychological inquiry, Tracy says, because of its widespread, but little recognised, social influence.

Ross Buck, professor of communication sciences and psychology at the University of Connecticut, believes pride has an important but under-recognised role in our social system, influencing many interactions in ways that we usually do not consider.

For example, a person who has a healthy dose of pride - justified or not - will dominate an interaction with a person who does not share that pride, he says.

Simply put, when the proud or scornful person interacts with the relatively unsuccessful person, he or she feels pity or scorn for the unsuccessful person, he says. The unsuccessful person senses those feelings and experiences envy or jealousy.

"Pride helps us survive by helping us maintain our status in a group. As social creatures, those relationships are essential," Tracy says.

"We're finding that children who are given constant rewards and flattery for their accomplishments may feel shame when they do fail," says Michael Lewis, distinguished professor of paediatrics and psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.

"With this shame comes an avoidance of doing anything that could cause them to feel shame in the future. So, some suggest that you can overdo praise."