Pride. It’s been called one of the deadly sins.
But what if pride holds the key to human success and flourishing?
Well, that’s the argument my guest makes in her book, Take Pride. Her name is Jessica Tracy, and she’s a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. Today on the show Jessica and I discuss why pride gets a bad rap, the different kinds of pride that exist, and how feeling the good kind of pride is essential to growth, development, and even cooperation. We also discuss how men and women experience and express pride differently.
Show Highlights
- Why the emotion of pride hasn’t really been studied in psychology until fairly recently
- Why pride has a bad reputation
- The difference between hubristic pride and authentic pride
- Why humans may have evolved to feel pride
- How Tracy and her team were able to determine that pride was a universal emotion
- What pride looks like
- What blind judo Olympians can teach us about pride expressions
- How cultures and social mores regulate biological pride displays
- What happens to our biology when we feel pride
- Prestige status vs dominance status and how they’re connected to authentic and hubristic pride
- Do men lean more towards hubristic or authentic pride?
- When you should use a dominance approach and when you should use a prestige approach in leadership positions
- What Steve Jobs can teach us about dominance and prestige leadership approaches
- How success can turn authentic pride to hubristic pride
- How to avoid success going to your head
- How you can healthfully compare yourself to others to help you become a better man
- How displaying too much pride makes others perceive you as low status
- Why humble brags are so annoying
Resources/Studies/People Mentioned in Podcast
- Paul Ekman
- Charles Darwin and emotions
- The Myth of the Alpha Male
- Our series on male social status
- The 3 Elements of Charisma: Power (including info on “power poses”)
- Tracy’s study on blind judo Olympians and pride expressions
- Serotonin and Status
- Testosterone and Status
- Amy Cuddy’s TED Talk on Power Poses
- My podcast with Richard Wrangham about chimps and dominance
- Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
- I, Mammal: Why Your Brain Links Status and Happiness
- Steve Jobs
- My podcast with Angela Duckworth about Grit
- My podcast with Carol Dweck on growth and fixed mindsets
- Envy Up, Scorn Down
- How to Talk About Your Accomplishments Without Sounding Like a Jerk
- President Obama’s speech announcing the death of Osama bin Laden
Take Pride is a highly engaging book with some great insights and tips on how to get the most out of authentic pride without falling prey to the downsides of the hubristic kind. If you enjoyed our series on male status or charisma, you’ll find a lot of the research we looked to in those articles summarized nicely in this book.
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And thanks to Creative Audio Lab in Tulsa, OK for editing our podcast!
Read the Transcript
Coming soon!
