Jess, Eric, and Zak published a new blog post in the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Character and Context Blog. In this post, they discuss the relationship between pride and social rank and their research investigating the causal direction of this association.
Check the post out in the link below!
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.
Pride is the downfall of many a tragic hero. Mr Darcy has to let his go before he can earn Elizabeth Bennet’s love. Dante listed it as one of the seven deadly sins. And as the famous (and oft-misquoted) verse from Proverbs cautions us, it “goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall”.
There’s no question about it: we’re consistently told that pride makes us obnoxious at best and doomed at worst.
But pride may not entirely deserve this reputation as a destructive force. There’s new evidence that this emotion has an evolutionary function, and that it plays an important role in the way that we interact with the world….
Read the full article in BBC Future here >>
So-called “power posing” could backfire if you’re seeking a donation. New research in Evolution and Human Behavior indicates that expansive postural displays — like standing up straight with your shoulders pushed back — can dissuade charitable giving.
“We have studied nonverbal displays of pride and high rank in my lab for some time now (for example, see here, here, and here) and this is a topic covered heavily in my book, Pride: The Secret of Success,” said study author Jessica L. Tracy, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia….
>> Read the full article in PsyPost here.
…Parents know that grit and inner motivation are building blocks to success, yet they sometimes struggle with how to instill these qualities in their children. Recent research finds they have a surprising — and often overlooked — key ingredient: pride….
Read the full article in the Washington Post
Cheng, Tracy, Foulsham, Kingstone, & Henrich (2013).
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104, 103–125.
Ashton-James & Tracy (2012)
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 466-476.
Tracy and colleagues.
Tracy & Matsumoto (2008)
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 11655-11660.
Tracy & Robins (2004; 2007)
Psychological Science and Current Directions in Psychological Science
Kenny Building at UBC
2136 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 1 604 283 9128
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