Pride: Adaptive social emotion or seventh sin

ABSTRACT—This experiment examined the ability of pride to serve as an adaptive emotion within the context of social interaction. After an in vivo induction of pride or a neutral state, participants engaged in a group problem-solving task. In contrast to a conventional view that pride is often associated with negative interpersonal outcomes, results confirmed that proud individuals not only took on a dom-inant role within the group problem-solving task, but also were perceived as the most likeable interaction partners. These findings suggest that pride, when representing an appropriate response to actual performance (as opposed to overgeneralized hubris), constitutes a functional social emotion with important implications for leadership and the building of social capital. Views of pride, unlike the majority of emotions, demonstrate a Janus-faced quality both through time and across cultures, from, for example, Dante’s Divine Comedy to Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (Lewis, 2000; Tracy & Robins, 2007a, 2007b). Unlike love, which is universally admired, or jealousy, which is universally reviled, pride has been alternately viewed as both virtue and vice, noble characteristic and deadly sin. The ques-tion of pride’s place in the emotion arsenal thus becomes an intriguing one. Does it engender greater stature or, as suggested by Emily Bronte ̈ in Wuthering Heights, lead to the breeding of sad sorrows? In considering this issue, many researchers have suggested that, although pride holds a somewhat negative connotation in American culture,1 it may possess a dual nature and, given certain contingencies, can be beneficial (Fredrickson & Bran-igan, 2001; Tracy &Robins, 2007a;Williams&DeSteno, 2008). The pivotal factor appears to be whether pride stems from objective successes (i.e., authentic, or beta, pride) or from a generalized overly positive assessment of self-worth (i.e.