The Art of Manliness - #249： The Benefits of Pride

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast, Pride. It's

00:00:19.920 been called one of the deadly sins, but what if pride holds the key to human success and

00:00:25.040 flourishing? Well, that's what the argument my guest today makes in her book, Take Pride. 0.96

00:00:29.260 Her name is Jessica Tracy and she's a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. And today

00:00:33.460 on the show, Jessica and I discuss why pride gets a bad rap, the different kinds of pride

00:00:38.360 that exist, and how feeling the good kind of pride is essential to growth, development,

00:00:43.040 and even cooperation. We also discuss how men and women experience and express pride differently

00:00:48.840 and what that means for us. Really fascinating show. After the show's over, check out the

00:00:52.680 show notes at aom.is slash take pride.

00:00:59.260 Jessica Tracy, welcome to the show.

00:01:03.780 Thanks so much for having me.

00:01:05.180 So your latest book or your new book is called Take Pride and it's about the benefits, how

00:01:10.620 pride can actually be a good thing, this thing that we call one of the deadly virtues. What

00:01:16.580 I think is interesting, you're a psychologist and you've written a book about pride, the feeling

00:01:20.960 of pride. And what's interesting about it, there's a lot of ink spilled in academia and

00:01:24.680 psychology about other feelings like happiness, sadness, lust, but there isn't a lot out there

00:01:30.640 about pride. Why is that?

00:01:34.460 You know, I think there's a number of reasons for that distinction that you're noticing.

00:01:39.840 So one thing is that, you know, there's been a lot of research on emotions, as you note,

00:01:43.800 and that kind of took off really in the 1980s and 90s, psychologists got really interested

00:01:49.140 in studying emotions. And that was largely due to research that had been done by Paul

00:01:53.820 Ekman. And Ekman, he's a big deal in emotion research. He's kind of one of the leaders in

00:01:58.140 the field. And in the 1960s, late 1960s, he actually decided to sort of put ideas to the

00:02:05.660 test that had first been proposed by Darwin, which was basically the idea that emotions

00:02:09.440 are evolved, that they're a universal part of human nature. And prior to Ekman kind of

00:02:14.720 looking into this, that wasn't really what anyone thought. Even though Darwin said that

00:02:19.220 about a hundred years earlier, the kind of reigning theory of the day in the 1960s, 70s

00:02:23.920 and earlier was that emotions were culturally specific. So you learned emotions from other

00:02:28.080 people in your social group. That's how you learned what you were supposed to feel in any

00:02:32.420 given situation. And that's how you learned how to express those feelings. What Ekman did was

00:02:37.060 he traveled across the world. He traveled to Papua New Guinea, which at the time was pretty

00:02:42.460 unexplored by Westerners. And he found groups of people living there who were totally cut

00:02:47.220 off from the Western world. Most of them had never before seen anyone from the West. And

00:02:52.260 he basically just showed them emotion expressions, photos of emotion expressions shown by Americans.

00:02:58.340 And he asked them how they identified them. And what he found was that these Papua New Guineans

00:03:03.260 identified the emotion expressions that were shown by Americans in the same way that Americans

00:03:07.580 did. And that's really important because it was sort of the first evidence to suggest

00:03:11.740 that emotions aren't specific to each culture, that actually they're universal, right? Because

00:03:16.540 there's kind of no other good explanation for how these people on the other side of the world who have

00:03:20.660 no contact with the Western world could recognize emotions in the same way Americans do, unless

00:03:25.660 that's because emotions are universal. And so this was kind of one piece of many that came to

00:03:30.940 build this finding that emotions are universal. They're part of our nature. They're, there's

00:03:34.540 something that we evolved to experience as humans, uh, not something that we, that were socialized

00:03:39.420 to experience or learn from others. But the thing about this research was that there was kind of a

00:03:44.140 small set of emotions that really were focused on. Ekman basically said there were six emotions that

00:03:49.500 have facial expressions. Uh, and, and he found good evidence for that. And then he kind of said,

00:03:54.220 that's all there is, right? He sort of said, there's, there's no more than these six. I've,

00:03:58.300 I've, I've looked at the face and he really did. I mean, he knows the face better than anyone else.

00:04:01.420 I think he said, I've looked at the face and these are the six emotions that are expressed

00:04:05.580 in the face. Um, and those are emotions that you think of, I think is sort of the most predominant

00:04:10.220 emotions that are really important to our daily lives. Things like anger, fear, sadness, disgust,

00:04:14.860 uh, I think surprise is one of them happiness. And so, so this was a big deal on fear. I forgot fear,

00:04:21.260 I think. Um, anyway, it was a big deal finding, but it basically also meant that any emotions that

00:04:26.940 weren't considered in that list that didn't seem to have universal facial expressions,

00:04:31.260 they were kind of left behind. They were sort of considered to be less important,

00:04:34.460 less foundational, less fundamental to human nature. And so they received a whole lot less

00:04:38.860 research attention. And of course, pride, even though I think it's incredibly important,

00:04:42.300 and we now have research to suggest that it's really important. It was one of those emotions

00:04:45.820 that kind of didn't make the cut. You can't recognize pride from someone else's face alone.

00:04:50.460 It turns out what we found in my research is that you can recognize pride and it is universal,

00:04:56.140 but it requires the body as well as the face. Okay. And we'll, um, we'll talk about, um, what that,

00:05:03.180 what pride looks like in a bit, but let's talk about, you know, the, the basic, the big picture

00:05:07.740 of your argument here is that pride can be a good thing. Um, but in our modern Western culture,

00:05:13.980 pride has a bad rap. It's considered one of the seven deadly sin sins. Um, there's been a backlash

00:05:18.940 lately against the self-esteem movement. Um, and there's a perception of the rising generation 0.91

00:05:23.500 that's too narcissistic, too prideful and unduly proud of themselves. And humility is the virtue

00:05:29.260 that we should aim for. But you say again that, you know, the title of your book is that pride is

00:05:32.700 the secret to human success. So why does pride have such a bad rap and how can pride actually be

00:05:38.380 good for us? Well, the reason for that is because it turns out pride is not just one thing. It's

00:05:44.460 actually two pretty different things. And, and this is really confusing for us in English because

00:05:49.180 we just have the one word for it, which is a real problem. I think, you know, we, we use the word

00:05:53.100 pride to refer to, uh, the kind of pride that, you know, I think you're referring to as a deadly sin.

00:05:57.980 And, and that's historically the way that many scholars have thought of it. Certainly religions

00:06:02.220 throughout history have talked about pride in this way. And that's pride in the sense of arrogance,

00:06:06.780 right? These, this is narcissism. It's, it's pride in the sense of feeling too much pride,

00:06:10.620 right? Sort of being egotistical about it, self-centered, conceited. Um, and, and that kind

00:06:15.500 of pride is a real thing. Many people feel it and we all have the propensity to feel it. And it,

00:06:19.420 it comes with a lot of negative consequences, all kinds of problematic social behaviors

00:06:23.740 that people tend to engage in when they're feeling that kind of pride. But what we found

00:06:27.660 is that that's not all the pride is. There's this whole other kind of pride also, and we call this

00:06:32.220 authentic pride. Um, and authentic pride is much more a sense of self-confidence, feelings of

00:06:38.300 self-worth, a sense of accomplishment or achievement or productivity. It's really the

00:06:42.700 kind of pride that we feel when we've worked hard for something and we have an accomplishment. And,

00:06:46.620 and we know that that accomplishment is due to our own efforts, right? That we sort of say,

00:06:50.460 here's what I did to get the success. And I feel genuinely good about myself as a result of that

00:06:55.660 success. And what we found is that authentic pride really is very different from what we call

00:07:00.620 hubristic pride, the bad kind of pride. Authentic pride actually seems to foster all kinds of

00:07:05.900 positive social behaviors. When people feel that they tend to care more about others,

00:07:09.580 they want to help others. Uh, they feel good about themselves, but in a way that lets them

00:07:13.180 also kind of care about the community. Whereas hubristic pride makes people feel good about

00:07:17.900 themselves in this way that makes them not care about others. And in fact, at times they will use

00:07:22.300 others. They'll actually sort of put others down in order to feel good about themselves.

00:07:25.900 So really different emotional experiences in almost every way, but they're both part of what pride is.

00:07:32.300 And are there any cultures that have differentiated the two? Like they have like 0.99

00:07:35.100 in America or in the West or English, it's like pride is, you know, it's how we describe both of

00:07:39.100 these types of like the hubristic pride and the authentic pride. Are there any languages that have

00:07:43.420 words that differentiate, differentiate between the two?

00:07:46.300 Yeah. You know, I've looked into this a bit and from what I can tell, absolutely. That's the case.

00:07:49.900 Now I'm not a native speaker of any of these languages. So, you know, people who, who speak them

00:07:53.500 better than me might take issue with this, but from what I understand, uh, yeah, French, Italian,

00:07:58.060 uh, basically all the romance languages do make this, do make this distinction. So in Italian,

00:08:03.340 I think it's, uh, uh, Fiorezza or Fiorezza is, is more authentic pride. It's kind of this fierce,

00:08:08.940 excited kind of pride. Uh, whereas, or I'm going to totally butcher this, but orgulio, uh, is more of

00:08:15.740 what we would think of as hubristic pride, more of an arrogant pride. And, and, uh, that's Italian, 1.00

00:08:19.420 but French has very similar words to that as well. Um, so, so the, the lack of a distinction

00:08:25.420 is partly a restriction of English in particular, many, many other languages do seem to actually

00:08:30.940 make this distinction in a more concrete way. Okay. So you said earlier, um, that Ekman, you know,

00:08:37.260 he just focused on these six types of emotions and he said, yeah, these are the ones that are

00:08:40.780 universal. Pride didn't get on that list and make the list, but you're saying your research shows

00:08:45.500 that yeah, pride is in fact, uh, universal. So what's the explanation? Why do humans feel pride?

00:08:53.020 What's the evolutionary psychology psychological explanation for it?

00:08:57.260 Well, what we think is that people evolved to feel pride because it ultimately helps us

00:09:02.300 get status. It helps us climb the social ladder, basically be looked upon by others in our group

00:09:07.780 as someone of influence. And it helps us do all the things that we need to do in order to get

00:09:12.600 influence and power over others. And of course, having influence, having power is really adaptive in

00:09:17.640 an evolutionary sense. People who have more influence over others have a better control over the group's

00:09:22.340 shared resources, uh, more access to better mates, all kinds of things that basically end up enhancing

00:09:27.940 our ability to survive and reproduce. So, um, how, how, how were you able to determine that this is

00:09:34.420 indeed a universal emotion? You know, what are, what does pride, both hubristic pride and authentic

00:09:41.300 pride, what does it look like or what does it feel like, uh, within the person?

00:09:45.700 Yeah. So, I mean, to, to figure out whether it's universal, we kind of just followed the

00:09:49.820 Ekman protocol. Um, you know, like I said, he, he studied facial expressions and traveled all over

00:09:55.100 the world to, to see if people in different countries recognize them and showed them in the

00:09:59.300 same way. We basically did the same thing with pride. And what we did was we sort of realized,

00:10:03.120 you know, yes, pride is not just going to be in the face. Sure. When people feel pride,

00:10:06.760 they smile, but that doesn't really look any different than happiness, but they also do stuff with

00:10:10.700 their body. Right. And this is something, if, you know, if you take a minute to think about it,

00:10:13.140 we all know this when people feel pride, they make themselves bigger, right? They expand their

00:10:17.680 posture. They push out their chest. They might tilt their head up a bit. Um, they basically take

00:10:22.920 this wide stance and, and it, and it's noticeable, right? We, we know when someone feels pride because

00:10:27.120 we see them, we see them become this kind of expansive, um, person. And so what we did was we

00:10:33.500 took photos of people doing exactly that kind of different variations of it, lots of different

00:10:37.200 variations. And we showed these photos to other people. And so we started just, you know,

00:10:41.080 in California where I was in grad school and we found that yes, Californians recognize pride.

00:10:45.380 They all agree. When we show them this photo, they say, yeah, that's pride. And they say,

00:10:48.820 in fact, not only that's pride, but also that's not some other emotion. It's not happiness. It's

00:10:53.120 not other emotions that look similar to pride. It's actually distinct to pride, that particular

00:10:56.840 display. And then we, then we went beyond California and we ended up traveling across the

00:11:01.300 world to Burkina Faso, West Africa. Um, and we managed to find a group of people there who were

00:11:07.020 sort of tribal villagers, much like the people that Ekman studied in Papua New Guinea, very cut 1.00

00:11:11.740 off from the Western world. They couldn't read or write. They only spoke their local dialect. 0.96

00:11:15.580 They've never traveled far from their village. And we showed them photos of people showing this

00:11:19.780 pride display. And they showed the same thing. They also agreed that that was pride and not some

00:11:23.660 other emotion. So that's nice evidence for, for kind of universality that people in cultures all

00:11:28.620 over the world who are unlikely to have been exposed to a pride expression, you know, in a Western

00:11:32.920 movie or a magazine or something like that, because these are people who don't really have

00:11:35.800 access to those things, they still understand pride in the same way that Americans do.

00:11:40.760 Um, and then the last thing we did on this point is we said, okay, well, what about displaying

00:11:44.460 pride? Do people actually display this expression all over the world or people from countries all

00:11:48.740 over the world when they're feeling pride? And so to get at that issue, what we did was we, um,

00:11:53.440 we said, let's, let's take a look at a situation that causes people to feel pride that people from

00:11:59.020 countries all over the world engage in at the same time. And so the Olympics kind of provided an ideal

00:12:04.540 opportunity for this, right? Cause here you have people succeeding in this incredible way,

00:12:08.700 uh, probably the most intense pride of their lives when they win a medal. And of course,

00:12:12.580 since the Olympics, you have countries from, you know, all over the world. So we simply took a look

00:12:16.880 at, at photos that were taken and we were able to get access to photos taken by an official

00:12:20.600 photographer in the judo competition in the 2004 Olympic games, which meant that we had photos

00:12:25.540 right from on the mat. So really close up high quality images of exactly what these athletes did

00:12:30.440 immediately after they won their match. And sure enough, what we found is that if they won their

00:12:34.580 match, they tended to show all of the behaviors that we had previously found to be part of this

00:12:38.460 recognizable display. And so that included things like expanded chest, head tilt up, smiling, but

00:12:44.460 also these really important body movements, right? Arms extended out from the body, either raised above

00:12:48.140 the head with hands and fists, sometimes, uh, crossed on the chest or, uh, at sides, sort of in this

00:12:54.100 akimbo position with hands on hips. All these displays we found tend to be shown by winners,

00:12:58.900 more than losers that held for people from countries all over the world. It was the case

00:13:03.140 for men and women. And then most interestingly, we were able to get a blind sample because we had

00:13:07.880 photos from the Paralympics as well. Turns out in the Paralympics, there's a blind judo competition 0.87

00:13:12.260 and we were able to look at congenitally blind people, people who've never in their lives seen a

00:13:17.640 pride expression, right? Cause these are people who are born blind. They've never been able to see.

00:13:21.140 And we were able to document the same thing in them. So, so this is a group of people who,

00:13:24.880 you know, inarguably could not have learned to display pride from watching what,

00:13:28.680 uh, that looks like when others show us, cause these are people who've never been able to see.

00:13:32.320 And yet they show that same display. So that I think is really nice evidence for, for universality.

00:13:37.460 And is there a difference between, you know, how someone displays authentic pride? Cause I think

00:13:41.500 like Olympics, that's a great manifestation of authentic pride. You work really hard. You have

00:13:45.060 this accomplishment and hubristic pride. Is there a difference in the way people display those two

00:13:49.280 types of pride? We've looked pretty hard for that. We haven't found much on that front. You know,

00:13:54.320 we've done things where we've sort of said that we think this one looks, you know,

00:13:57.200 maybe when someone has their hands on their hips and kind of in that, um, you know, uh,

00:14:02.260 it seems a little arrogant kind of posture when they, you know, they're pushing their chest out

00:14:05.540 and, um, something about their face looks arrogant. And we've tried, we've shown those photos to people

00:14:09.400 and said, come on, is this, is this more arrogant or is it more confident? We don't tend to get much

00:14:13.700 agreement on that. Um, my guess is there, there are big cultural differences in that, you know,

00:14:17.980 I think in some cultures it's so unacceptable to display any pride at all, but even, you know,

00:14:23.480 pride expression that might seem to us pretty authentic would seem to them hubristic simply

00:14:27.700 because it seems arrogant to just, just show any pride. Um, so I think that's going to be a

00:14:32.420 factor. You know, we have found that when, when we tell people other things about the person,

00:14:35.740 like this person, he thinks he's really great. You know, we sort of suggest this person's pretty

00:14:40.020 arrogant. Then people will say, Oh yeah, that, that display suggests hubristic pride,

00:14:43.900 but it's not based on the behaviors alone. It seems to be based on the behaviors combined with

00:14:48.700 some sort of contextual factor. All right. So just to clarify, so, um, you found, um,

00:14:53.500 societies where pride displays are looked down upon, they don't encourage it, but yet these people

00:14:59.160 were still able to recognize pride displays. Yeah, no, that's, that's interesting. So this,

00:15:04.020 the society that I looked at for Kina Faso that I mentioned before, pride isn't particularly kind of,

00:15:09.640 what should I say? It's not a particularly highly valued emotion. Um, you know, it's really, it's,

00:15:13.320 this is a very small scale subsistence society. Most of their efforts are focused literally on kind

00:15:18.180 of surviving, right? Finding enough food for themselves and their family. Um, and so thinking

00:15:22.620 about an emotion that makes you feel good about yourself and status isn't really a central part

00:15:26.960 of their society. And yes, they recognize pride. But in addition to that, we also did a study in

00:15:31.520 Fiji and Fiji is neat because they're actually a culture where pride is, is explicitly downplayed

00:15:37.280 and sort of unacceptable. And this is a group, this is a culture where, um, status differences are

00:15:42.140 incredibly sort of determined by birth. They're really hard and fast rules. There's no movement.

00:15:47.660 It's not like, you know, America where, you know, theoretically anyone can, can get high

00:15:50.780 status. It's kind of the opposite of that. You're either born into it or you're not.

00:15:54.480 And if you're not, you need to show that in your behaviors and the way that you interact with people

00:15:58.900 in almost everything you do. Status differences are a huge part of daily life in this Fijian culture.

00:16:04.600 And so the result of that is a display like pride, which, which is seen as sort of a way of saying,

00:16:10.300 Hey, you know, I deserve higher status is really not acceptable. And so when we showed people

00:16:15.140 pride displays, they recognized it as pride. And then they would also say, that's not a high

00:16:18.940 status display. We'd say to them, you know, does this person have high status? And they would say,

00:16:21.860 no, not really, because it's so unacceptable to do that. You know, if you're low status,

00:16:26.060 that's the last thing you would do. And if you're high status, you also wouldn't show this display

00:16:29.960 because it would sort of be seen as lording your status over others, right? Because your status is

00:16:33.860 never in question. You have it due to her heredity. You don't have to, you don't have to do that. 0.93

00:16:38.260 And so that's also unacceptable. But the neat thing that we found was when we, when we looked

00:16:43.080 at people's unconscious automatic associations, their kind of responses to the pride display

00:16:47.520 that they can't help going beneath kind of the surface of what they tell us. Then what we found

00:16:52.520 was, in fact, they did see these pride displays as high status. When we, when we probed for sort of

00:16:56.960 their, their unavoidable unconscious responses, they couldn't help, but show a tendency to see pride

00:17:02.120 displayers as people who deserve high status. And I think that's pretty cool because what it tells us

00:17:06.860 is that even in this culture, we're at an explicit level where, you know, what their culture says

00:17:11.240 is pride displays are not okay. They're not high status. Even in a culture like that, because of

00:17:16.360 this evolved tendency that we have as humans to see pride displays as signals of high status,

00:17:21.420 we see evidence of it in, in these people's unconscious responses.

00:17:25.120 Yeah. That's really interesting. So we, we do that. We put the fist in the air.

00:17:28.240 That is just a way to show it to others that, yeah, we are awesome and you should give the status.

00:17:33.420 I mean, yeah, I think, you know, I think the extent to which we do it purposely or intentionally

00:17:38.200 versus automatically is always a question, right? Because we can control our pride displays. This is

00:17:43.020 something we can choose to regulate. Like most emotion expressions, we can sort of say, I'm feeling

00:17:47.000 it, but I know it's not okay to show it right now. So I'm going to tamp it down. And I think,

00:17:51.040 you know, in many contexts and many cultures, that's what people do much of the time because

00:17:54.620 pride is really regulated by cultures because it has such a strong impact on status. When we see people

00:17:59.520 display pride, we have this automatic tendency to see them as high status and we decide they

00:18:03.460 deserve high status. So the result of that is you have this really powerful display that can really

00:18:07.240 mess with a society's status rules. Society counteracts that by saying, okay, here's all

00:18:11.960 the rules you're going to create about when it's okay to show your pride and when it's not.

00:18:15.920 Okay. And we'll talk about some of those rules here later on. Besides the external manifestations of

00:18:21.480 pride, like what does, what happens with inside of our bodies biologically when we feel pride?

00:18:26.920 You know, I think we know a lot less about that. There's, there's certainly, you know,

00:18:32.020 this is all kind of a new area of research. And so the biological side of it, even any emotion is

00:18:36.980 kind of something we're just learning about now. And we know more about it for things like anger and

00:18:40.200 fear. We know a pretty good deal about that for pride. You know, we certainly would expect to see

00:18:46.560 increases in the hormone testosterone, which is all about high status, or it's, it's largely about

00:18:51.760 high status, I should say. And there's some evidence to suggest that that's the case. You know,

00:18:56.160 there's, there's research that's been kind of widely talked about from Amy Cuddy and Dana Carney

00:19:01.580 and others suggesting that when people pose a display that looks a lot like pride, but they

00:19:05.480 call it power posing, but it's basically the pride display, they show increases in testosterone.

00:19:10.600 Now, I don't know if you've heard, there's questions about whether those findings replicate

00:19:13.880 widely. And, you know, I don't do that research, so I can't really speak to that. But theoretically

00:19:18.280 speaking, we would expect to see links between pride and testosterone. You know, maybe not when you

00:19:23.240 pose it in the moment, but just in general, when you genuinely feel pride, or when, when you feel

00:19:27.920 yourself gaining in status, there is evidence that status gains are linked to testosterone. And so

00:19:32.680 that's something that we would expect. And then you also mentioned in the book, serotonin, the

00:19:36.320 neurotransmitter, serotonin. Yeah. Yeah. So there's nice evidence from the animal literature more than the

00:19:42.120 human literature to suggest that sometimes when animals increase in status, they actually show

00:19:46.600 serotonin increases, which is kind of surprising in many ways, because we think of serotonin as very,

00:19:51.100 it's sort of the happiness neurotransmitter, right? It's, you know, people who are depressed

00:19:54.980 take drugs that are serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which basically means they increase serotonin levels

00:19:59.100 in the brain, making people feel a greater sense of contentedness. And so it's interesting that that

00:20:05.560 would be associated with high status. But the thinking in the, in the literature on this is that

00:20:09.580 it's a particular kind of high status. It's a high status that's really about social popularity.

00:20:16.160 So people, people who are high in serotonin, if they're high status, it's going to be of the sort

00:20:21.020 of high status where they get along really well with others. Others like them. They are sort of

00:20:25.780 good, good social communicators, that kind of thing. And so theoretically, it would make sense

00:20:31.220 that authentic pride, which really is all about increasing the form of status that we call prestige,

00:20:35.300 which is a status that basically involves being well-respected by others, having accomplishments

00:20:40.200 that then others see as valuable to the group and others want to learn from you and work with you.

00:20:44.620 So that kind of status, which is so social in nature, theoretically should be linked to serotonin.

00:20:49.900 Now we don't, you know, there's no evidence yet for a link between authentic pride and serotonin.

00:20:53.720 So this is all sort of theoretical, but I would expect to see that.

00:20:57.040 Okay. So let's, let's carry this conversation about prestige or different types of status.

00:21:00.820 So prestige is one type of status. And as you said, it's connected to, you know, being well-respected,

00:21:05.940 well-regarded, being useful to those around you. But then there's another type of social status

00:21:10.680 that's not as friendly. What's that other type of social status and what are its characteristics?

00:21:16.080 Yeah. So, so the distinction we make is between prestige and dominance and dominance is a status

00:21:20.540 that it's, it's, you still have power. It's, it's a very, we found that people who are dominant do have

00:21:25.260 influence over others, but it's not because they contribute something of value to the group or,

00:21:29.820 or they're respected. It's actually because they're, they're seen as threatening that basically

00:21:34.340 these are people who have control over some resource that others want. Maybe it's wealth,

00:21:39.680 maybe they're just physically stronger. You can think of this in chimpanzees where it's the

00:21:43.120 physically strong chimp that becomes the most dominant. And they, they wield that control in 1.00

00:21:48.260 a manipulative and aggressive way, essentially literally threatening people, making them think,

00:21:53.120 but listen, if you don't do what I tell you, I'm going to hurt you, or I will take away something

00:21:57.320 of value to you. So this is the boss who, who threatens to fire her employees if they don't do what she 1.00

00:22:02.160 says, right? So these are people who do have power and you can imagine that boss being quite

00:22:06.040 influential. Her employees are going to do exactly what she says, but they're not doing it because 1.00

00:22:10.100 they want to, right? They're not deferring to her out of choice. They're deferring to her in fact,

00:22:14.460 because they feel they have no choice at all. Okay. And so connecting this to the types of pride.

00:22:20.140 So authentic pride would be a channel to prestige status and hubristic pride would be a channel to

00:22:25.960 dominant status. Yeah, that's exactly right. So if you think about what authentic pride does for us,

00:22:30.580 basically it's this emotion that makes us feel good about ourselves for our accomplishments,

00:22:33.980 for the specific kind of hard work that we put in to achieve. And then it makes us want to be nice

00:22:38.640 to others. There's good evidence to suggest that when we feel authentic pride, we care more about

00:22:42.720 others. And these are exactly the kinds of behaviors that would get one prestige because you have a

00:22:47.100 person who's going to be working hard to achieve in ways that are valuable to the group and then

00:22:50.920 caring about others, being nice to others. And that's really important for prestigious leaders.

00:22:54.840 These are people who get power because they want to help others, right? Others want to defer to them

00:22:59.440 because they think here's someone who I admire. He's got all these accomplishments and he's going

00:23:03.920 to help me learn from him. I'm going to, I'm going to learn valuable skills that he already knows.

00:23:07.500 And that's really important. So prestigious leaders kind of need to be nice to others and

00:23:11.400 helpful to others. Dominant leaders in contrast, they get their power kind of explicitly from being

00:23:16.660 not nice to others, right? These are people who are threatening and they're intimidating.

00:23:20.480 They essentially force others to do what they want by telling them, look, you're going to be

00:23:24.620 sorry if you don't do that. And hubristic pride, hubristic pride basically is this emotion that

00:23:29.680 makes people feel superior to others. It makes them believe I'm better than everyone else around.

00:23:34.240 It makes them feel aggressive and disagreeable. People who tend to feel hubristic pride tend to

00:23:38.860 become antisocial in various ways. They're not very nice to others. They are manipulative at times.

00:23:44.440 They're more willing to engage in what we call misbehavior, whether it's petty crime or lying

00:23:48.700 or cheating. All these behaviors are exactly the kinds of things that we would expect to see in someone

00:23:53.400 who's going to attain dominance, sort of a willingness to get ahead at the expense of others, to use

00:23:57.800 others toward getting ahead, basically to be a bully.

00:24:00.580 But again, going back, dominant status does work, but in the long run, does prestige status do better?

00:24:08.220 Well, you know, I mean, that's a great empirical question and I would certainly like to think so.

00:24:12.660 What we have found is that both kinds of status get people power. So we brought students together

00:24:17.820 in groups to try to work together just to see how hierarchies emerge. And what we do is we have them

00:24:22.480 do this task together. And then afterwards we ask them to tell us who was the most influential in

00:24:27.180 the group, how influential was everyone, and then tell us how prestigious and how dominant everyone

00:24:31.700 else was. And then we also get outside observers, people who watch videos that we make of these

00:24:36.100 interactions, and they tell us who is most influential as well. And what we find is that

00:24:40.080 both dominant and prestigious people end up with a lot of influence. The people who are seen as

00:24:45.980 dominant, which means other people on their group say, I didn't like him. I was afraid of him,

00:24:50.000 right? Literally, I was afraid of him. Those people still get power. They're seen as highly

00:24:54.260 influential by the people they worked with. And they're seen as influential by people who are

00:24:57.560 watching from outside. And they actually have influence. When we look at sort of decision-making

00:25:01.480 over, you know, what happens in that interaction, what happens with the task, the dominant people

00:25:05.460 have just as much influence in the sense of actually making the decisions as do prestigious people.

00:25:11.140 So both dominance and prestige actually work in terms of getting influence over a group.

00:25:15.600 However, there are real differences. So the prestigious people come out of that situation being well-liked.

00:25:20.000 Everyone had a good time working with them. They like them. The dominant people are not well-liked.

00:25:24.540 The people don't like them. And so you can imagine a situation in which, yes, both get power,

00:25:29.740 but there's certain value to having power and also being well-liked versus having power. And then the

00:25:35.080 moment that people have a chance to take you down, they're going to do that, right? I mean,

00:25:39.040 eventually groups form coalitions against leaders they don't like and topple them, right? And so

00:25:43.960 when you have a dominant leader, that's what's going to happen. The group's always going to be

00:25:47.180 looking for an opportunity to get rid of that person. And so in the long run, it's probably

00:25:51.320 not going to be a particularly adaptive strategy. Whereas someone who's prestigious, the group is

00:25:55.560 not looking for an opportunity to get rid of them at all because the group really likes them.

00:25:59.160 So even when they're no longer as valuable, say at some point they no longer have the wisdom or the

00:26:02.840 skills that they once had that originally earned them the prestige, the group still isn't going to

00:26:07.080 try to oust them, right? The group might not, you know, they might find someone else to sort of,

00:26:11.720 you know, lead as well, but the group will always find a place for a prestigious person because

00:26:15.480 they like them, right? When you care about your leader, you're not going to sort of try to get

00:26:19.500 rid of them. You're going to try to find a place and a way to keep them.

00:26:22.140 Yeah. We've had Richard Wrangham on the podcast talk about demonic males and he found the same

00:26:28.200 behavior amongst chimpanzees is that there'll be a super assertive, aggressive chimp that will take

00:26:33.580 the lead. But after a while, the monkeys get tired of it and he calls them election seasons and

00:26:38.860 all coalesce together and like, you know, have a coup and kick that guy out.

00:26:43.560 That's exactly right. Yeah. And now, you know, chimpanzees don't have prestige. Prestige seems

00:26:48.900 to be unique to human, uh, to the humans species. And so, so that's why you're going to see that

00:26:53.780 kind of thing where when you have prestige, if you have a hierarchy based on prestige,

00:26:56.540 there's no reason to kick out a prestigious leader. So it should work very differently.

00:27:00.400 Well, you can go in circling back to, um, testosterone and its connection to, uh, dominance pride.

00:27:06.520 So, I mean, this is the art of manliness podcast. Is there a type of pride that men tend to

00:27:11.800 lean towards authentic or hubristic?

00:27:15.520 What we found is that most people tend toward authentic pride. So if we just measure these

00:27:20.680 two things, levels of authentic pride are always higher than hubristic pride. And that might be

00:27:25.340 partly due to what we call social desirability, right? It's not a very socially acceptable thing

00:27:29.340 to tell us that you experience things like arrogance on a regular basis. And so that might

00:27:34.060 be influencing things, but in general, people tend more toward authentic pride. Now that said,

00:27:38.960 we do find a gender difference in hubristic pride, which is to say, on average, men report

00:27:44.460 experiencing higher levels of hubristic pride than women do. However, men still report even higher 0.85

00:27:49.300 levels of authentic pride. Okay. And I thought it was interesting in your book, you taught going

00:27:53.360 back to the usefulness of dominant, um, dominant social status and prestigious social status is that

00:27:59.140 there are certain instances where one does better than the, like it's more useful than the other.

00:28:04.840 So like, and what would be a situation where Dom, like a dominant strategy, sort of the assertive,

00:28:10.260 very aggressive, overbearing, um, status strategy would be better than say prestige.

00:28:15.760 Yeah. Well, this is really neat. We found this in a study. This is another study where we had groups

00:28:19.540 work together to solve problems and work on tasks. And this time we assign leaders. So rather than just

00:28:24.960 let the leader emerge naturally, we specifically assign one person in the group to lead the group.

00:28:29.880 And then we measured whether that person tended toward a dominant or prestigious strategy. And we

00:28:34.580 did that just by asking the other people who worked with, with him or her, you know, was this person

00:28:38.700 prestigious? Was this person dominant using various measures that we have for that? And, and then we

00:28:44.020 looked at outcomes. So we actually had, had ways of scoring the tasks that people did. And they did a

00:28:48.240 bunch of tasks that requires sort of complicated logical analysis, problem solving. And then there were

00:28:52.920 some tasks that involved creativity. Uh, for example, there was this task where you have to think of as

00:28:56.780 many creative uses for a brick as you can. And it's kind of a fun one. People end up, you know,

00:29:00.900 if they're good at it, they'll say all kinds of crazy things for using a brick. And if they're not,

00:29:04.060 they'll say, you know, building a house. And that's kind of where it ends. Um, and so what we

00:29:08.860 were interested in is whether the groups who were led by someone high and prestigious would do better

00:29:13.020 than the groups that were led by someone high and dominant. So that's kind of what we expected,

00:29:16.420 right? We thought, yeah, these dominant leaders, sure, they get control over a group,

00:29:20.640 but no one likes working for them. No one likes them. So the group is not going to do well.

00:29:24.360 But in fact, that's not what we found. And actually we had three different tasks that

00:29:29.180 required problem solving sort of analytic thought for all three of those tasks. Groups did better

00:29:34.500 if they were led by a dominant than if they were led by a prestigious person. The only thing that

00:29:38.800 groups did better on if they were led by a prestigious person was the creativity task,

00:29:42.320 the brick task, basically. And I think that makes sense. They did better on that because to be

00:29:46.500 creative, you have to be really comfortable. You have to feel safe, kind of spitballing ideas,

00:29:50.780 you know, not worry about someone belittling you as a dominant leader might,

00:29:54.360 so it does make sense that prestigious leader fostered, you know, greater creativity.

00:29:58.700 But I think it's surprising in some ways that, you know, the dominant leader was the one who

00:30:02.660 actually led people to success on these other tasks, these analytic tasks. My thinking there is

00:30:07.380 that the prestigious leader was really concerned about consensus, right? Prestigious leaders care

00:30:11.900 about including everyone, make sure everyone's voice is heard. And when you have 20 minutes to

00:30:16.980 solve a few problems, sure, consensus is great, but you really need to come to a clear answer.

00:30:21.720 And it may be the case that in that situation, the dominant leader was better able to say,

00:30:25.560 look, I don't want to hear from you anymore. We've heard from you. I want to hear this person. Okay,

00:30:28.980 this is the answer we're going with. Making a firm decision, not worrying about hurting others'

00:30:33.020 opinions, you know, kind of going with whatever he or she believed to be correct, based presumably on

00:30:39.240 the kind of feedback that other people were giving. We don't really know. And that ended up being

00:30:44.260 more successful.

00:30:44.880 So when deadlines are short, you want the dominant guy, the dominant boss. I mean,

00:30:49.420 you give the example of Steve Jobs as an example of that, where he demanded these, like, what seemed

00:30:55.160 like impossible things on a short timeframe. And I guess the usual route that sort of these creative

00:31:01.200 types that work at Apple would be like, well, let's work together. Let's get a consensus. But he was

00:31:04.440 like, no, it's like, solve the problem now. And they did it.

00:31:08.280 They did it. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you know, I'd like to think there's a third option as well.

00:31:12.840 You know, I'd like to think that because there was a downside too. Yes, these people,

00:31:16.620 these groups were solving tasks. Yes, the people who worked for Steve Jobs, you know,

00:31:19.680 made amazing, amazing technological innovations, but they didn't like it. People don't like working

00:31:24.720 for Steve Jobs. They're not happy in their work. And that's what we found in our study as well.

00:31:28.540 The people who worked with a dominant leader weren't happy. They didn't enjoy the study. They

00:31:32.160 didn't enjoy the task. They didn't like the leader. They didn't feel good about themselves.

00:31:35.720 Whereas the people who worked for a prestigious leader, they had all those things. They were really

00:31:38.980 happy. They had a good time. They felt pride in themselves. They liked their leader.

00:31:41.840 So what we really would like, obviously, is both, right? We want people to be happy,

00:31:46.320 feel good about themselves, like their leader, but also get the job done. It's possible that you

00:31:51.280 could have a prestigious leader who fosters all those good feelings, but also takes into account

00:31:56.360 the way that a dominant person might wield control and, you know, the kind of expectations a dominant

00:32:00.880 person sets and perhaps can, you know, say at times, listen, I'm not going to look for consensus.

00:32:05.100 This is the time where we need to solve the problem and sort of take that perspective and solve it that

00:32:09.260 way. That would be my hope. You know, I mean, the study that we did, the other thing is it's very

00:32:13.560 different to assign someone to be the leader of a task and just kind of say, listen, you've been

00:32:18.000 chosen. You're all equal. You know, you're all undergrads coming in to do this study, but we're

00:32:21.540 randomly selecting you to be the leader. And if that person tends toward, you know, the prestige style,

00:32:27.340 they might feel uncomfortable actually sort of taking charge in a real serious way where they say,

00:32:31.240 no, I'm going to go with your decision and not yours. It might, in that situation, require someone

00:32:35.420 who's got the more dominant personality to be able to do that, to override people who he or she knows

00:32:40.020 are actually his equals, right? In real life situations, people typically get to the top,

00:32:46.320 you know, in other ways. They're not randomly assigned to be the leader. And so in those situations,

00:32:49.400 it's possible the prestigious leader would feel more comfortable, you know, drawing a conclusion

00:32:53.660 without reaching consensus. All right. So being able to mix it up, I guess, I guess status,

00:32:58.260 be statusly adroit is the goal. Yeah, I think, I mean, that might be one solution. I, you know,

00:33:02.460 Steve Jobs did have both. It's fair to say he was definitely dominant. I mean,

00:33:06.340 based on lots of reports of people working with him, he could be a real unpleasant person to work

00:33:10.360 for, but he also, I mean, in many ways, he's a creative genius, right? I mean, he had incredible

00:33:14.440 ideas and that's prestige, right? Being able to see things and have a vision and then portray it to

00:33:19.780 others and convince others to follow you. That's prestige. So he definitely is someone who wielded

00:33:24.240 both strategies quite effectively. So let's talk about people who do make that trip up to the top.

00:33:29.140 And they often do that through authentic pride and using prestige status to get there.

00:33:35.360 But is it possible to switch to hubristic pride and dominance status once you get to the top?

00:33:41.400 Yeah, I think that does happen. I think it's not uncommon. In the book, the example I give of this

00:33:46.160 is actually Lance Armstrong. And the reason for that is because he's someone who we know,

00:33:50.820 you know, in his early life, he had to be motivated by authentic pride, right? I mean,

00:33:54.520 the hours that he put in on a bicycle when he was just a teenager, it's pretty incredible. And one

00:34:01.160 of the big arguments I make in the book is that authentic pride is what motivates us to do things

00:34:05.880 that are boring, you know, tedious, actually painful when there's an easier option, right?

00:34:11.640 And in our daily lives that we often have a situation where we don't have to ride our bike

00:34:16.100 for 20 hours at a time. You know, we don't have to work really hard to, you know, ace every exam.

00:34:21.740 We could get B pluses, you know, we can even get Bs, we could get by, in other words,

00:34:26.180 without going above and beyond. But because we evolved to have the sense of self that we care

00:34:31.260 so deeply about, and we, you know, are so motivated to feel good about ourselves and feel authentic

00:34:36.000 pride in the kind of person that we are and the kind of person we want to be, we will end up putting

00:34:40.800 in that extra work, basically going, you know, going the extra mile, whatever it is, sacrificing

00:34:45.280 pleasure, and even subjecting ourselves to pain in order to get these positive feelings about our sense

00:34:50.060 of self. And that's, I mean, Lance Armstrong is a good example of anyone of that, because he just

00:34:54.520 put in so much work as a young man to become the fastest cyclist in the world. He had to be doing

00:34:59.600 that because he genuinely wanted to be the fastest cyclist in the world, right? That was his ideal

00:35:04.740 sense of self. He wanted to be this person who is faster than anyone else. But then, of course,

00:35:10.540 we know something changed, right? At some point, we don't know exactly when, at some point,

00:35:14.700 he stopped actually trying to be the fastest cyclist in the world and started doing whatever

00:35:19.480 he could to be perceived as the fastest cyclist in the world. And in cycling, as in many things in

00:35:25.320 real life, there's an easier way, right? It turns out he was able to use doping to sort of get ahead

00:35:30.300 without actually, you know, being the fastest cyclist. He could seem to be the fastest if he

00:35:34.700 was cheating. This is an option that's available to many people, you know, in various ways that we

00:35:38.640 could either work really hard to actually have that achievement, or we could find an easier way to get the

00:35:42.920 praise, to get the adulation of others without actually putting in the hard work. Sometimes

00:35:47.400 through explicit cheating. Other times, you know, rather than you have an achievement, rather than

00:35:52.160 keep working hard for the next achievement, you're going to find ways to publicize your achievement to

00:35:55.860 others, right? Maybe you'll brag about it. Maybe you'll, you know, make sure everyone else knows

00:35:59.440 about your achievement. And that's a way to keep those feelings going without actually putting the

00:36:03.500 hard work in. And it's really tempting to do that, you know? I mean, I think we can all see once we

00:36:08.460 start feeling those pride feelings that we've worked so hard for, it's, it's, it's a pleasurable

00:36:13.620 feeling, right? I mean, those, that's the motivation that got us there. But that is when authentic

00:36:17.640 pride flips to hubristic pride. As soon as we start thinking about the praise that we're getting from

00:36:21.940 others, how we're seen by others, and sort of easier ways of getting that praise rather than the

00:36:26.700 hard work that we put in to get there, that's when we're fixating on hubristic pride and a sort of

00:36:32.420 more artificial sense of pride, rather than the authentic pride that's based on achievements.

00:36:36.000 Yeah. I think this is connected to Carol Dweck's work about growth and fixed mindsets. It seems

00:36:40.560 like people with a hubristic pride have that fixed mindset. Like I am awesome. I am smart. I don't

00:36:46.160 have to work for it. And then, you know, she's found studies that students, you know, high school 0.87

00:36:50.740 students perceive themselves as smart. That's where they think other people, like they're more likely

00:36:54.640 to cheat, to maintain that as opposed to a student with a growth mindset who is willing to put in the

00:37:01.440 extra work to actually learn the topic. That's exactly right. Yeah. No, I mean,

00:37:06.160 it makes sense, right? That if all of a sudden what you're focused on isn't being the best,

00:37:10.140 but seeming like the best, the last thing you want to do is actually challenge yourself, right?

00:37:14.080 Because if you challenge yourself, you could fail. You could not seem like the best, right? Of course,

00:37:18.540 to be the best, you have to challenge yourself. You're never going to actually be the best unless

00:37:21.820 you keep pushing yourself harder and harder. So as soon as you start to care more about performance,

00:37:26.040 how others perceive you, whether it's performance goals or hubristic pride, which is this artificial

00:37:31.420 sense of superiority, you're not going to put in the hard work. You're not going to challenge

00:37:34.880 yourself. You're going to look for an easier way to make sure others think you're great and you're

00:37:39.400 going to avoid anything that can actually threaten that. And so how do you avoid that? How do you avoid

00:37:44.020 that, you know, success going into your head and you're shifting to a hubristic pride mindset?

00:37:49.880 It's tough, you know? I mean, I think, I really think this is where understanding this

00:37:54.160 distinction becomes really important because, you know, I think this is why a lot of, a lot of

00:37:59.100 cultures, a lot of religions, like we started talking about have said, well, pride is bad,

00:38:03.080 you know? So then their answer is don't feel pride at all. As soon as you start feeling pride,

00:38:06.360 you're sinful, you're, you know, that's a bad place to be. And that really puts people in a bind

00:38:10.200 because we're hardwired to feel pride, right? And so telling us not to feel something that

00:38:13.860 we evolved to feel and we evolved to want to feel, that's, that's a pretty tough thing to ask people

00:38:18.820 to do. I think the better solution is to think, well, listen, authentic pride feels pretty great too.

00:38:24.160 But to get authentic pride, you can't just rest on your laurels. You can't just stop challenging

00:38:28.620 yourself. In fact, if you do that, you're going to veer over to this other kind of pride that we

00:38:32.480 know has all kinds of negative consequences, right? People who feel hubristic pride, you know,

00:38:36.200 they end up lying, cheating, they lose friendships, they lose relationships. I mean, Lance Armstrong,

00:38:40.620 it's a great example of all these things. And no one wants that. So I think bearing that in mind,

00:38:46.000 you know, as soon as you sort of have that success watching yourself, what do you do next? You know,

00:38:50.460 do you, do you keep, you know, sure, celebrate the success, feel pride, but then do you keep

00:38:55.640 celebrating? Do you look for new ways of getting praise, new ways of celebrating yourself? Or do

00:39:01.020 you look for new ways of accomplishing something? You know, do you think back, how can I keep the

00:39:05.120 cycle going by going for that next goal? Let me think about the next thing I need to do to become

00:39:10.100 the kind of person I want to be versus I'm going to stay right here. I don't want to challenge myself

00:39:14.380 anymore. And I'm going to just maximize how good I feel about myself right now. That's a,

00:39:18.220 that's a real important distinction. Okay. That's a, that's a tricky thing to navigate,

00:39:21.520 but be thoughtful about. Well, so I mean, okay. So pride is connected to social status and social

00:39:26.500 status is connected to comparing ourselves to others, either negatively or positively. I mean,

00:39:33.080 I think we understand like how hubristic pride can encourage this sort of negative type of

00:39:37.260 comparison, but it seems like in order to have authentic pride, you also have to sort of be aware

00:39:42.140 of your social status amongst your peers and how you can be useful. So how can you have authentic

00:39:49.900 pride and, you know, compare yourself in a helpful, healthy way? That question makes any sense.

00:39:58.220 Yeah. I mean, I think you're right. The comparisons to others are going to be part of both pride. And

00:40:02.580 maybe that's kind of what you're getting at, that it's not just, you know, hubristic pride is this

00:40:06.060 really explicit, I'm better than others. But even with authentic pride, it's hard to sort of have a goal

00:40:11.220 for yourself without thinking about where others stand on any particular dimension, right? We sort

00:40:15.740 of, we're always evaluating ourselves in comparison to others. And that's the case for, for both kinds

00:40:19.940 of pride. We, we kind of can't help it. We're social beings, you know, they are both about status.

00:40:24.260 So it is always going to be about, well, you know, I had this achievement, but my colleague,

00:40:29.420 they, you know, they just had this other achievement. Is my achievement better or worse? Should I

00:40:32.620 really, do I deserve to feel pride in my achievement when my colleague just did this great thing?

00:40:36.180 It's really hard not to do that. Um, and it's really tricky because the more we do it,

00:40:40.660 you know, on the one hand, it can push us, right? If we have a colleague, you know, who's done great

00:40:44.220 things and, and we, we see them as a role model and want to do, you know, great things like them

00:40:48.500 and feel pride when we're kind of getting there, that's great. But then once we surpass them,

00:40:54.000 that becomes really tricky because then it's sort of like, oh, well, maybe I'm better than them,

00:40:56.980 right? And so that's, that's where hubris becomes a risk factor. Um, so I do think, I do think

00:41:01.240 it's complicated at the same time. It's probably unavoidable, right? It's sort of, we can't just,

00:41:05.820 as much as I would like to say, just figure out who you want to be yourself. Don't worry about anyone

00:41:08.940 else, you know, try to be that person. It's probably not possible, right? As we're figuring

00:41:13.620 out our own goals for ourself, we're doing that partly on the basis of the goals that we see others

00:41:18.040 around us accomplishing. Um, and that, that's part of being human being, you know, a social being

00:41:23.080 that's aware of others in our group and what they're doing. Yeah. I came across research talking

00:41:27.260 about comparison and, you know, improvement. And they found that, um, if I remember the study

00:41:31.540 correctly, is that if you, it's better to like compare yourself to someone who's just a little bit

00:41:35.060 better than you, cause they have more to teach you cause they're more like you than comparing

00:41:38.980 yourself to someone who's like an expert. Cause that just debilitates you. And it's like,

00:41:42.340 I'm never going to get better. Um, I think this is the air force Academy. They actually did this,

00:41:46.920 um, unintentionally. They, they stuck people who were sort of like really good students and really

00:41:51.820 poor students. They were thinking that the really good students would help the really poor students,

00:41:55.220 but actually the poor students got worse. And then they put, um, sort of average students

00:42:00.020 and they found that the average students actually improved more because they were learning the

00:42:04.420 comparisons were more in line with each other and they can actually learn more from each other to

00:42:08.440 improve. Yeah. I think that makes a ton of sense when you're both at the same level. So you're both

00:42:12.900 students. I think that's absolutely right. If you, if you're a really poor student and you're paired

00:42:16.520 with one of the best students, you're just going to feel horrible about yourself, right? Cause you're

00:42:20.300 going to see this person who theoretically you shouldn't be that far off from, and yet you are,

00:42:24.060 and that just feels incredibly discouraging, but someone who's a little bit better and you,

00:42:27.660 you can see clearly, okay, here are the steps I can take to get to that level.

00:42:31.140 That can be really encouraging. And that could be a great thing. You know, I think it's different

00:42:34.580 when someone's a student and when someone's a teacher, you know, I think teachers, we see them

00:42:38.540 explicitly as a whole different level than us. So there it's okay to have a teacher who's,

00:42:42.280 who we see as a real expert and really smart and competent. And that's really important. We want

00:42:46.260 to have teachers that we respect, but there we're not trying to become the teacher. We're just trying

00:42:50.300 to learn as much as we can from the teacher. So it's a bit of a different goal.

00:42:53.100 Okay. So, um, you, you mentioned earlier that we have these evolved

00:42:56.200 status displays or pride displays. Um, but you also, it's, it's kind of tricky because

00:43:02.420 we've, if you display too much, uh, pride, then people are like, ugh, that's, you're actually

00:43:08.980 have low. So, I mean, what is it, what does the research say about, you know, modulating your,

00:43:13.540 your pride displays so that people can sense that you, you are, you, you have high status,

00:43:18.300 but yet at the same time, like you don't want to do it so much where you turn people off.

00:43:22.440 Yeah, no, incredibly complicated also. Um, you know, and, and this is something that is

00:43:27.340 complicated also because there's no one size fits all answer. Um, when it's okay to display

00:43:32.520 pride and how it's okay to display pride varies dramatically by situation, culture, social group,

00:43:38.520 uh, you know, country, um, there are all kinds of differences in this. And this is what I was kind

00:43:42.420 of getting at before that cultures do have all these rules about how we display pride because

00:43:46.720 cultures want to regulate how status works. And there's all kinds of cultural differences. And,

00:43:50.320 uh, you know, whether you have a really strict hierarchy or really mobile hierarchy when it's

00:43:54.040 flexible and that's going to play into all this, um, you know, studies have found, for example,

00:43:58.220 that, um, people who, so, you know, in our study of the Olympics, of course, people show pride. And

00:44:02.920 I think that seemed as pretty acceptable. We didn't measure whether, you know, was it acceptable or

00:44:07.140 not, but I think we can agree that when you win an Olympic medal, that's a time where not showing

00:44:11.580 pride would probably be problematic, right? It was sort of say, look, what do you think you're too good

00:44:14.700 for the Olympics even, you know, if you want to show your pride. Um, but there's this other study

00:44:19.360 that was conducted in Australia, which, you know, as far as I understand, very individualistic,

00:44:22.780 much like the U S. Um, and they looked at Academy award winners and winners of other athletic events,

00:44:28.580 not the Olympics, but various athletic events. And they looked at pride displays that were shown,

00:44:32.760 um, either kind of pretty overt and extreme displays versus much more mild and subtle displays.

00:44:39.320 And what they found was that when they had participants who were college students looking

00:44:43.200 at these displays, they knew that they were winners in all these cases. So theoretically,

00:44:46.560 the pride is considered appropriate, but when the, when these people, when these winners showed

00:44:51.500 displays that were really extreme, that was considered too much, right? Then, yeah, they said,

00:44:56.540 okay, they're a winner. That's fine. And maybe there'll be high status, but I don't like him.

00:45:00.580 He seems arrogant. I like the other guy better, right? They actually preferred people who showed much

00:45:05.440 more subtle displays because they thought those people are taking into account the feelings of the

00:45:10.260 person who didn't win, right? Showing too extreme pride when there's a loser as well,

00:45:14.100 is seen as antisocial, you know, inconsiderate and, and hubristic. And so people aren't liked

00:45:19.880 as a result of it, even, even in a situation where, you know, winning something really important,

00:45:24.100 like an Academy award, it should be okay to show pride. And yet we do have rules and expectations

00:45:29.180 about this. Right. I mean, that's the tough thing. That's an important question for people

00:45:33.000 in our information economy have to figure out. Cause like, you have to toot your own horn,

00:45:38.080 right? And like show like, Hey, I got these skills. I'm awesome. But at the same time,

00:45:41.460 you can't do it so much that people are just like, ugh, like this guy just seems really

00:45:45.520 unsufferable. Exactly. No, it's, it's really complicated because that is the other side of

00:45:49.880 it that we found is that showing pride does get you status. When we see people show pride,

00:45:53.480 we automatically assume that they're deserving of high status. We're more likely to want to hire

00:45:58.020 them. You know, if you see someone show pride in an interview, we found that we'll hire that person

00:46:01.800 above someone who shows shame. Even if the person who shows shame has a much better resume,

00:46:05.740 we'll still go for the pride displaying person. You know, we like a winner. We like someone who's

00:46:09.620 telling us in their, in their body movements that they have high status. That's something

00:46:12.940 that we all want. At the same time, we don't like people who are arrogant. So it's, it's a really

00:46:17.680 tough line to navigate, you know? And I think the people who, who, who are best at it are the people

00:46:22.580 who are the prestigious leaders of the group, right? They're the people who are respected.

00:46:25.700 They're known to be high status. You know, everyone looks up to them, but they're not considered overly

00:46:29.620 arrogant. Um, and, and part of, I think why they're able to manage that is because of the humility

00:46:34.080 that they're able to display at the same time as, as they're displaying pride. Um, but it is,

00:46:38.760 it's really, it's really complicated. You know, I would say, I guess, concrete advice,

00:46:42.780 acknowledging others is always a really helpful way of doing that while you're crediting yourself.

00:46:46.860 You're also talking about the role that others played. Um, in the book, an example I give of

00:46:51.540 this is when, uh, Barack Obama, when he gave his speech after, uh, the assassination of bin Laden,

00:46:57.160 he gave this speech and it was a really big deal earlier on his presidency. This was back in his

00:47:00.820 first term. He hadn't done a whole lot that people were really excited about at that point. This was a

00:47:05.440 really big deal. And his speech was really sort of calculated to be this great example of authentic

00:47:11.600 pride and prestige, because he made it clear that he was responsible for this. He used the word I a

00:47:16.940 lot, but he talked about specific behaviors he did. He was very focused on here are the things that I

00:47:21.820 did to get there, which is, you know, very much authentic versus hubristic pride. It wasn't, I'm

00:47:25.760 great. It was, I did this. And then I did this. The other thing he did was he talked about all the

00:47:30.660 other people who were relevant, right? He made sure to give a lot of credit to the military,

00:47:34.020 uh, the, the soldiers who actually went in and, and, and took bin Laden to the, his advisors who

00:47:39.440 came in with the intelligence to basically all the people involved. He made sure to give credit.

00:47:43.640 And that's really important because it's a way of suggesting I didn't do this alone. I have a sense

00:47:48.140 of humility, but at the same time, here are the things that I did that I deserve credit for.

00:47:52.600 Yeah. That's, that's great. That's a great example. But the, the other issue too, with,

00:47:55.680 you know, trying to show some humility while displaying pride is like the humble brag. Like we don't

00:47:59.820 like that. Like where you humbly assert your, your pride or your status. Um, it was, so what's going

00:48:07.160 on there? Like, why, why do, why does that rub people the wrong way where the humble brag?

00:48:12.300 My sense is it's because it's too obvious, right? That it's not, it's not a humble pride. You know,

00:48:17.540 if there was a way, like, I think, you know, what Obama did was there was no bragging at all. There was

00:48:21.800 humility and pride. And that's very different than humility and bragging or humility and arrogance.

00:48:26.540 Right. And I think those two things don't work together when, when you're clearly bragging,

00:48:31.500 but also kind of trying to play it off and like, but really, you know, I'm not great.

00:48:36.020 Everyone knows that what you really mean is no, but really I am great. You know,

00:48:39.920 if you're actually humble, you don't want to brag. Right. And so I think the combination of the two

00:48:46.200 tells people to signal the humility shouldn't be taken seriously. That's sort of just a front.

00:48:51.000 Well, Jessica, this has been a great conversation. Where can people, um, find out more about your

00:48:55.960 work and your books? They can delve deeper into this topic. Yeah, well, of course the book is

00:49:00.180 available anywhere books are sold and you can also go to, we have, we have a website for the book at my,

00:49:04.640 um, my research website and it's ubc-emotionlab.ca. And then it's, uh, the link, the, the tab to click on

00:49:14.420 to learn about the book is take pride. Uh, and you can go directly there by doing ubc-emotionlab.ca

00:49:19.420 backslash take dash pride. Um, either way gets you there and that's, that will tell you all about 1.00

00:49:25.060 the book and how to get it. Awesome. Well, Jessica, Tracy, thank you so much for your time. It's been

00:49:28.900 a pleasure. Oh, good. Thank you.

00:49:44.280 My guest today was Jessica Tracy. She's the author of the book,

00:49:47.080 Take Pride. It's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more

00:49:51.080 information about her work at ubc-emotionlab.ca slash take dash pride. Uh, we'll have a link to

00:49:58.860 that on our, the show notes. Speaking of the show notes, you can check out the show notes at

00:50:02.320 aom.is slash take pride for links to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic.

00:50:09.620 Well, that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,

00:50:14.040 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com. Our show is

00:50:17.540 edited by Creative Audio Lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing needs or audio

00:50:21.680 production needs, check them out at creativeaudiolab.com. As always, I appreciate the

00:50:25.920 continued support. Until next time, this is Brad McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - November 05, 2016

#249： The Benefits of Pride

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