What Kind of Pride Do You Feel?
The pride of having done something, and the pride of being someone
Pride looks like one emotion from the outside - the straighter back, the small smile - but research on how people actually describe it keeps finding two. One is the feeling of 'I did that well', tied to effort and to specific work. The other is the feeling of 'I am better than them', tied to status and comparison. They share a face and very little else, and most people have more of one than they would guess.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think about the last few times something went well for you, and answer about what you actually felt, not what you think you should have felt.
What it measures
The two facets of pride described by Tracy and Robins: authentic pride (accomplishment, confidence, earned satisfaction) and hubristic pride (superiority, arrogance, feeling above others). A third bar looks at how you explain your successes - by what you did or by what you are - which the model that first proposed these two facets linked to which pride follows, though a later study did not reproduce that specific link. This is not a self-esteem or narcissism test: it looks at the emotion that follows success, not at your overall opinion of yourself.
Based on: Authentic and hubristic pride scales (Tracy & Robins, 2007)
Possible results
Authentic pride
The satisfaction of having done something well.
Hubristic pride
The feeling of being above other people.
Credit to effort
Whether you explain your wins by what you did rather than by what you are.
Common questions
Is pride good or bad?
Both, which is why researchers split it in two. The pride of accomplishment goes with confidence, effort and being liked; the pride of superiority goes with aggression, conflict and a more brittle self-image. Most traditions that warned against pride were describing the second kind, and most coaches who encourage it mean the first.
Is hubristic pride the same as narcissism?
Related but not the same. Narcissism is a broad personality trait; hubristic pride is an emotion that anyone can feel after a particular success. Studies find that people high in narcissism feel this kind of pride more often, but a single score here says nothing about your personality as a whole.
Can you feel both kinds of pride at once?
Yes. The two scales are only weakly related, so a person can feel earned satisfaction and a flash of superiority after the same win. What seems to tip the balance is the explanation you give yourself: success put down to effort tends to produce the first kind, success put down to being innately special tends to produce the second.
Sources
- Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The psychological structure of pride: A tale of two facets. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.506
- Tracy, J. L., Cheng, J. T., Robins, R. W., & Trzesniewski, K. H. (2009). Authentic and hubristic pride: The affective core of self-esteem and narcissism. Self and Identity. doi:10.1080/15298860802505053
- Holbrook, C., Piazza, J., & Fessler, D. M. T. (2014). Conceptual and empirical challenges to the “authentic” versus “hubristic” model of pride. Emotion. doi:10.1037/a0031711
An honest note The items are Quinthea's own wording, adapted from the published pride scales, so scores cannot be compared with the published norms. Only the first two bars correspond to that scale; the third is a related construct from the same research, not a validated factor of it, and a later study did not reproduce its link to hubristic pride. The two-facet model is also contested: some researchers argue the hubristic scale partly measures unpleasant feelings rather than pride, and pride words carry different weight across languages and cultures.
Try one of these next
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How Clearly Do You Know Yourself?
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Are You a Social Chameleon?
Whether you are the same person in every room - and whether that is the compliment it sounds like