Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
Loading next page...
/lp/university-of-california-press/the-quest-for-eliciting-hubristic-pride-nomological-shockwaves-IrOkrPjeOd
References
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
- Publisher
- University of California Press
- eISSN
- 2474-7394
- DOI
- 10.1525/collabra.38634
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
Kusano, K., & Kemmelmeier, M. (2022). The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across Different Experimental Manipulations. Collabra: Psychology, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.38634 Social Psychology The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/ Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across Different Experimental Manipulations 1 1 Kodai Kusano , Markus Kemmelmeier Interdisciplinary Social Psychology Ph.D. Program, University of Nevada, Reno, NV, US Keywords: emotion, affect, pride, attribution, replication, reproducibility, open science, construct validity https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.38634 Collabra: Psychology Vol. 8, Issue 1, 2022 Pride is a complex emotion. According to Tracy and Robins’ two-facet theory of pride, authentic pride arises when success originates from unstable attributions (e.g., effort), and hubristic pride arises when success originates from stable attributions (e.g., talent). Yet, controversy persists about the validity of hubristic pride. Our research compared diverse experimental methods to assess the construct validity of both facets of pride. Study 1 (n = 329) asked participants to recall pride inducing episodes with explicit encouragement to feel target emotions. Study 2 (n = 177) presented participants with positive feedback on interpersonal perception based on unstable vs. stable characteristics of participants’ competency. Study 3 (n = 328) and Study 4 (n = 107) presented participants with feedback of high leadership aptitude based on prestige vs. dominance quality and asked them to predict others’ responses to the same feedback. A mini meta-analysis estimated that hubristic-pride manipulations were generally successful relative to authentic-pride manipulations in inducing hubristic pride with minimal intensity. However, authentic pride was far more salient than hubristic pride across all conditions and manipulations. Study 3 and 4 illuminated participants’ apprehension in reporting hubristic pride, when they expected others to experience greater hubristic pride, corroborating the low frequency of hubristic pride across all studies. Analyses of nomological networks revealed that authentic pride clearly covaried with positive affect, while hubristic pride covaried more strongly with negative affect (e.g., hostility and shame) than with positive affect. Analyses of nomological shockwaves highlighted the difficulty of observing intense levels of hubristic pride in people’s experience of success. Our findings pose novel challenges to the two-facet theory of pride: (1) hubristic pride may not be a discrete emotion of pride; and (2) a single-facet model of pride still stands as a fruitful model, until pending evidence otherwise supports the two-facet theory of pride. Recall the last time when you were proud of yourself. While scholars across various disciplines have long pur- What exactly led to the feeling of pride? This question sued the complex nature of pride, one prominent theory is more challenging than it seems. People often associate gained popularity. Tracy and Robins (2007) proposed a two- pride with success, achievement, or accomplishment—pride facet theory of pride by conceptualizing two distinct forms is a positive feeling that inspires others to succeed. People of pride: authentic pride and hubristic pride. Accordingly, also associate pride with superiority, arrogance, or ego- the authors developed the 7-item Authentic Pride and tism—pride is a negative feeling that is subject to social Hubristic Pride (AP-HP) Scales to measure pride. Authentic disruption. Pride is a multi-faceted construct, and what pride consists of accomplished, successful, achieving, fulfilled, causes one’s pride depends on specific circumstances elic- self-worth, confident, and productive; hubristic pride consists iting qualitatively different types of event. This article ex- of snobbish, pompous, stuck-up, conceited, egotistical, arro- amines ways to experimentally induce the multi-faceted as- gant, and smug. This theory argues that pride is likely to pect of pride. have evolved to signal status to others (Tracy & Robins, 2007). As facial and non-verbal expressions of the two a kk@nevada.unr.edu The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... facets of pride are reliably distinguishable, they function to in the context of prestige—status attainment through re- signal that successful individuals deserve status, and their spect, demonstration of knowledge, mastery, skills, com- traits are worthy of imitation (for review, see Tracy et al., munal traits, and competency within culturally valued do- 2010; Tracy & Prehn, 2012). In this sense, pride not only mains. The experience of hubristic pride tends to occur in motivates individuals to pursue good deeds (Williams & the context of dominance—status attainment through coer- DeSteno, 2008), but also promotes social norms that should cive tactics, induction of fear, aggression, and intimidation be transmitted via social learning (Tracy et al., 2020). (Cheng et al., 2013). Different Attributions of One’s Success Elicit Ambiguous Evidence for the Construct Validity of Distinct Forms of Pride Hubristic Pride Self-conscious emotions such as pride result from evalu- Tracy and Robins’ (2007) two-facet theory of pride is ation of different aspects of the self. For instance, negative to date the dominant framework of pride research, if not self-conscious emotions, guilt and shame, arise from dis- the only psychological theory that has explicitly theorized tinct evaluations of the self: guilt involves negative attribu- the multi-faceted nature of pride (e.g., Lewis, 2000). Yet, tions of behavior, whereas shame involves a focus on neg- there exists an emerging controversy about the two-facet ative attributions of the global self (Tangney et al., 1996). model of pride, especially concerning the construct validity Similarly, the two-facet theory of pride argues that authen- of hubristic pride. The ongoing controversy comes down tic pride and hubristic pride emerge from distinct attribu- to two issues: (1) whether data accumulated by Tracy and tions to the self (Tracy & Robins, 2004, 2007). A core propo- Robin’s AP-HP scales support the status of hubristic pride sition of their theory of pride is: as a pride emotion (Holbrook et al., 2014); and (2) whether adequate evidence warrants the two-facet model of pride “the two facets of pride are elicited by distinct causal over a more parsimonious, a single-factor view of pride attributions, such that authentic pride is typically (Williams & DeSteno, 2010). elicited by internal, unstable, controllable attributions for a positive event, whereas hubristic pride is typically Does Hubristic Pride Represent Anything about elicited by internal, stable, uncontrollable attributions Pride? for the same positive event.” (Tracy & Robins, 2007, p. 507) Holbrook et al. (2014) raised questions about the validity Both types of pride arise from success and give rise to of AP-HP scales for capturing the two-facet concept of status. However, the nature of the event that sparks pride pride. The authors argued that the HP scale items (e.g., pre- tentious) represent the state in which one is aware of the does not necessarily predict which type of pride is elicited. gap between the ascribed status and actual competency, What differentiates the two is in which manner individuals attribute success to the self. People feel authentic pride and one is overclaiming success that is not justified. In this when success is judged to originate from something un- sense, the HP scale measures nothing like pride—an emo- tion arising from success. Across three studies, these au- stable about the self (e.g. “I passed the exam because I thors challenged the assumptions of the two-facet theory worked hard on it”). This type of success involves efforts, skills, and competence. By contrast, hubristic pride arises of pride: (1) the AP scale correlated with internal attribu- when success is attributed to something stable about the tions including effort, ability, and stable causes; and (2) the HP scale correlated with external attribution such as luck. self (e.g., “I passed the exam because I am talented”), and it These findings indicate that people’s attributions of success does not require earned skills or hard work. In short, just as the underlying attributions represent a central ingredient do not align with the attributional antecedents (i.e., stable in whether guilt or shame are elicited, the underlying attri- vs. unstable) proposed by Tracy and Robins (2007). Internal attributions of personal success, which presumably produce butions distinguish the two facets of pride (Tracy & Robins, authentic pride, were not divorced from stable causes like 2007). Theoretically, the two facets of pride produce indepen- natural talent or privilege (Holbrook et al., 2014). This evi- dent outcomes and have distinct correlates. At the trait dence suggests that authentic pride arises whenever a per- son takes credit for success regardless of stable or unstable level, authentic pride and hubristic pride are only weakly causes. By contrast, the highly pejorative terms like preten- correlated (meta-analytic r = .13, Dickens & Robins, 2020). Individuals with higher disposition to feel authentic pride tious or arrogant of the HP scale represent one’s negative exhibit desirable traits such as lower shame-proneness, evaluation of unmerited success—accepting the fact that the person received admiration without demonstrating the higher self-esteem, higher agreeableness, and higher con- scientiousness; individuals with higher disposition to feel admirable behavior. Perhaps for this reason, the HP scale hubristic pride exhibit maladaptive traits such as lower self- correlated with self-deprecating tendencies such as a per- esteem, lower agreeableness, and higher narcissism (Shi et son’s readiness to accept blame for failure and lower self- esteem (Holbrook et al., 2014). al., 2015; Tracy et al., 2009; Tracy & Robins, 2007). An- other line of research has proposed that the two facets Holbrook et al. (2014) concluded that something akin to of pride are associated with two distinct status strategies hubristic pride may still exist, but Tracy and Robins’ HP concerning prestige and dominance (Henrich & Gil-White, scale does not measure anything about pride at all. If any- thing, the AP scale measures a more general concept of 2001; Tracy et al., 2020). Authentic pride tends to occur Collabra: Psychology 2 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... pride focused on not only effort attribution but also sta- less of the type of recall instructions. In a similar vein, the ble attribution including natural talent. By contrast, the HP hubristic-pride manipulation sometimes induced authen- scale fails to measure a general concept of pride defined by tic pride just as strongly as did participants asked to re- many as: “a positively valenced emotion that occurs in re- call authentic-pride episodes (e.g., Ho et al., 2016, Experi- sponse to success” (Mercadante et al., 2021, p. 130). ment 1). These findings imply that, based on participants’ self-reports, hubristic pride was never the more prominent Does Evidence Warrant the Two-Facet Model of emotion even among participants who were told to recall Pride over a Single-Factor View? hubristic-pride episodes. The authors attributed the low frequency of hubristic Another major criticism against the two-facet theory of pride to social desirability, which presumably suppressed pride relates to parsimony. Williams and DeSteno (2010) ar- ratings of hubristic pride. To avoid this problem, the au- gued that there is no adequate evidence to warrant the two- thors explicitly encouraged participants to report feelings facet model of pride over a single-factor view of pride. For such as pretentious or stuck-up, admitting that these were instance, work on non-verbal expression of pride suggests socially aversive emotions. Arguably, these instructions that authentic pride and hubristic pride constitute the same may increase demand characteristics. When the experi- facial expression; as a result, people readily recognize au- menter explicitly tells participants to feel certain emotions, thentic pride (Tracy et al., 2005; Tracy & Robins, 2008), but it confounds true effects caused by the target construct with contextual information (the cause of the expression) is crit- an effect caused by the experimenter’s instruction. In the ical for people to label it as hubristic pride (Tracy & Prehn, case of hubristic pride, the experimenter’s encouragement 2012). Williams and DeSteno (2010) argued that this type to feel “pretentious” might seemingly show an increase of evidence does not support the status of hubristic pride as in hubristic pride, but the observed effect may be discon- a discrete emotion. They concluded that, if contextual cues nected with any attributional antecedents expected by the are necessary to assist the distinction between authentic theory. Others raised a similar criticism against the Velten and hubristic pride, the two-facet model of pride is inap- procedure in research on the effects of mood (e.g., Larsen propriate. They further rejected the view that authentic and & Sinnett, 1991). hubristic pride represent natural kinds which evolved sepa- Overall, the current evidence of the construct validity of rately to serve distinct social functions (Tracy et al., 2010). hubristic pride contains a serious limitation. More impor- There is ample evidence linking authentic/hubristic tantly, the existing manipulation fails to differentiate au- pride to distinct psychological outcomes at the trait level thentic pride from hubristic pride. Whereas this may be the (see Dickens & Robins, 2020). However, there are much less reason why there are so few studies that have arguably ma- data on the construct validity of state-level hubristic pride, nipulated hubristic pride, this can be also interpreted as fa- and a lack of experimental evidence on eliciting authen- voring the parsimonious view that there is only authentic tic and hubristic pride. Here, we take on the issue of ma- pride (Williams & DeSteno, 2010). nipulation checks, which should be used as the foundation to prove causal mechanisms of the very construct a theory Overview of the Present Studies conceptualizes (Ejelöv & Luke, 2020; Fiedler et al., 2021). If the two-facet theory of pride is correct, one’s perception Good theories should not be abandoned by bad methods. We believe that the two-facet theory of pride merits further of success based on unstable traits (e.g., effort) lead to only scrutiny, but there has not been a systematic investigation authentic pride, and attribution to stable traits (e.g., tal- to assess the construct validity of experimental inductions ent) lead to only hubristic pride. A successful manipulation would demonstrate that manipulation of success to the dis- of authentic and hubristic pride. We provide such an inves- tigation with two specific goals. tinct attributions would elicit the two facets of pride. We do not know of such evidence. Experimental Manipulation of Hubristic Pride There are only two published series of studies that claim to have manipulated the two facets of pride (Experiment 1, The first goal was to consider various manipulation 2, & 3, Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012; Experiment 1 & 2, Ho 1 methods other than the Relived Emotion Task for inducing et al., 2016). Both sets of studies relied on the so-called hubristic pride independently from authentic pride, estab- Relived Emotion Task, in which participants recall their lishing an alternative method that spontaneously manip- past emotional episodes (Ekman et al., 1983). We highlight ulates specific attributional processes as proposed by the several challenges to the method and interpretation of the two-facet theory of pride (Tracy & Robins, 2007). Study 1 observed data. First, self-reported levels of authentic pride aimed to replicate and extend previous findings obtained were always higher than the levels of hubristic pride regard- using the Relived Emotion Task (Ashton-James & Tracy, 1 We did find a third publication by Sanders et al. (2018), which used the identical manipulation of hubristic pride; however, their manipu- lation checks never assessed the emotion or feelings that participants experienced. Instead, the authors asked whether participants at- tributed the success they described as part of the Relived Emotion Task to their own effort. When participants subsequently provided higher effort ratings in the authentic-pride condition relative to the hubristic-pride condition, the authors interpreted their emotion ma- nipulation to be a success. Collabra: Psychology 3 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 1. Successful manipulation of authentic and hubristic pride 2012; Ho et al., 2016). Given the inconsistent findings and Mapping Nomological Shockwaves and Networks of limitations of Study 1, we subsequently conducted three State-Level Pride studies to explore alternative manipulation methods. Study The second goal of our investigation was to document 2 adopted a false-feedback paradigm of pride induction validity evidence of state-level authentic/hubristic pride. (Williams & DeSteno, 2008), in which we varied the cause The ongoing debate revolves around the status of hubristic of participants’ success in an interpersonal perception task pride as a pride emotion (Holbrook et al., 2014; Williams to be either unstable (effort) or stable (talent). Study 3 and & DeSteno, 2010). We contribute to the debate by docu- 4 modified Study 2 by including a leadership aptitude test menting the “nomological shockwaves” of the manipula- (Fast & Chen, 2009) and examined the presence of social desirability by asking participants to imagine how others tion of authentic/hubristic pride—the degree to which an experimental manipulation causes expected changes in rel- would react to the same emotion-induction test. Study 2-4 evant constructs relative to comparison conditions (Chester were exploratory in the hope of finding the strongest ma- & Lasko, 2021). In our research, we provide such investi- nipulation of hubristic pride; however, at every step, our method of induction was informed by theory with a priori gations by following the recommendation by Chester and Lasko (2021). In addition, we conducted standard nomolog- predictions. ical network analyses of state-level pride by computing cor- A successful manipulation based on theory-driven in- relations with other relevant emotion items. duction method should represent a test of the theory itself (Fiedler et al., 2021). A liberal standard for a successful ma- Study 1 nipulation—adopted by prior research—requires that both manipulations cause an increase in the target facet of pride Our first study directly pitted Tracy and Robins’ (2007) at least relative to the control condition. That is, the hubris- two-facet theory of pride against Holbrook’s alternative ac- tic pride manipulation should increase hubristic pride rela- count of hubristic pride (2014) using the Relived Emotion tive to the control condition, while the same manipulation Task. All manipulations in Study 1 followed the same for- may increase authentic pride (Figure 1a). A more conserva- mat of the Relived Emotion Task by Ashton-James and tive standard—which we aimed to discern—requires that an Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016) and manipulated the at- experimental manipulation increases only one facet of pride tributions of success episodes that participants were sup- relative to the other pride: e.g., the hubristic-pride ma- posed to recall. We then subjected all manipulations to nipulation should only increase hubristic pride but should the assessment of the nomological shockwaves (Chester & not increase authentic pride relative to the authentic-pride Lasko, 2021) by assessing changes in the state-level au- condition (Figure 1b). thentic/hubristic along with other emotion variables. All data, analysis codes, and Appendices are available via OSF (https://osf.io/9rfby/). Collabra: Psychology 4 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... 2012). The CFA result supported the two-factor model of Sample & Experimental Design pride (see the Appendix Study 1 for the model fit indices). We aimed to detect an effect size of d = 0.49, the smallest Filler Items. We included other filler items to quantify effect size we were able to find concerning the experimental “the nomological shockwaves” (Chester & Lasko, 2021) of induction of hubristic pride (versus authentic pride) in pre- the manipulation of authentic/hubristic pride. Following vious research (Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012; see also Ap- previous research on theoretical predictions on the ex- pendix, Table A5). Assuming α = .05, and β = .80, the re- pected correlations with authentic/hubristic pride (see the quired sample size was 134 for a two-group comparison. Appendix Table A2), we added other relevant items. Specifi- Allowing for a small number of unusable cases, we aimed to cally, we added items from the Negative Affect and the Pos- collect at least 70 participants for each condition. Whereas itive Affect scales of the PANAS-X (Watson & Clark, 1999) this calculation was merely based on a two-group compar- and several items that were applicable yet absent from the ison (hubristic pride condition vs. authentic pride condi- PANAS-X (aggressive, intellectual, creative, and curious). All tion), when applied to our four-cell design of Study 1, we ratings were assessed on a 7-point Likert-type scale. The needed a sample of 180 participants to detect an effect of complete list of items is detailed in the Appendix Table Cohen’s f = 0.25. A3. For data reduction, we first ran an exploratory factor Participants were undergraduate students at a large analysis with oblimin rotation across all conditions. Consis- Western U.S. public university. We collected a total of 337 tent with Watson and Clark (1999), our solution suggested participants, eight of which were excluded for not providing a two-factor solution replicating PANAS-X: “Positive Affect open-ended responses in the Relived Emotion Task. Partic- (enthusiastic, interested, determined, excited, inspired, alert, ipants (70% female) were randomly assigned to either au- active, powerful, creative, .92, = .94)” and “Neg- thentic-pride (n = 83), Tracy and Robins’ hubristic-pride (n ative Affect (guilty, ashamed, aggressive, hostile, = .75, = 84), Holbrook’s hubristic-pride (n = 78), or control (n = = .85).” 84) conditions. Students received partial course credit upon Personality Measures. For exploratory and validation participating in the online survey. Participant demograph- purposes, we assessed individual differences using the ten- ics are summarized in the Appendix (Table A1). item Big Five Inventory (Rammstedt & John, 2007) and the 13-item Narcissistic Personality Inventory (Gentile et al., Method 2013) in Study 1 (and in all studies reported here, and all results were highly similar). We found pattens consistent The Relived Emotion Task. The original study by Ekman with previous research: individuals who felt more authentic et al. (1983) asked professional actors and emotion scien- pride in this experimental setting were more narcissistic (r tists to relive a past emotional experience for 30 seconds. = .29, p < .001), conscientious (r = .36, p < .001), extraverted This procedure has been adopted as a common emotion (r = .21, p < .001), agreeable (r = .11, p = .045), and less neu- induction method in emotion research. All of our manip- rotic (r = -.30, p < .001); individuals who felt more hubristic ulations followed the same format used by Ashton-James pride were more narcissistic (r = .28, p < .001), extraverted and Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016). The Appendix pro- (r = .12, p = .034), and less agreeable (r = -.12, p = .024). We vides full descriptions of the manipulations used in Study do not report further analyses regarding individual differ- 1 (Table A3). The manipulation of authentic pride asked ences in the present article, but we made personality data participants to write down an authentic-pride inducing available to interested readers (see our OSF repository). episode in which they were doing really well as a result of their efforts and felt good without feeling superior to Procedure others. Our manipulation of hubristic pride asked partici- pants to write down a hubristic-pride inducing episode in Upon consenting to the online survey, all participants which they accomplished something while not having to were assured that (1) the purpose of the study was to as- work hard and felt pretentious or stuck-up. A newly gener- semble an extensive catalog of emotional experiences and ated manipulation of hubristic pride inspired by Holbrook (2) their responses would remain anonymous. Participants et al. (2014) asked participants to write down an episode then received one of the manipulation instructions. Partic- in which they accomplished something but they found that ipants were encouraged to describe the event “as vividly as they received credit because of something other than them- possible in at least 100 words.” After that, they rated their selves—not due to their talent, ability, nor effort. Instruc- current feelings, answered a battery of demographics and tions in the control condition asked participants to share personality questionnaires, and were debriefed. their typical day as a college student and write down every- thing they had done that day. Result Self-rated Pride Feelings. We assessed authentic pride by We conducted a 2 within (Pride Rating: Authentic vs. aggregating seven items—accomplished, successful, achiev- Hubristic) x 4 between (Instruction Condition: Authentic ing, fulfilled, self-worth, confident, and productive .94, vs. Hubristic [Tracy & Robins] vs. Hubristic [Holbrook et al.] = .96); hubristic pride by aggregating seven vs. Control) mixed-factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) items—snobbish, pompous, stuck-up, conceited, egotistical, on the rating of pride. Both the main effects of Pride Rating arrogant, and smug .92, = .95) (Tracy & Robins, and Instruction Condition were significant, F(1, 325) = 2007). We also conducted a Confirmatory Factor Analysis 817.12, p < .001, = .72, and F(3, 325) = 3.36, p = .019, (CFA) on this scale using R’s lavaan package (Rosseel, Collabra: Psychology 5 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 2. Ratings for different instruction conditions and pride ratings in Study 1 = .03, respectively. In general, participants reported far ways greater than hubristic pride regardless of condition. This general pattern means that the instruction to feel greater authentic pride than hubristic pride regardless of “pretentious” and “stuck-up” inadvertently induced au- condition, t(328) = 28.32, p < .001, M = 2.55, 95% CI [2.38, diff thentic pride, and that the method failed to distinguish the 2.73] (see Figure 2). two facets of pride—with the exception that in the hubristic We also found a significant Pride Rating x Instruction pride condition self-reports of hubristic pride were slightly Condition interaction, which suggested that the main effect of Instruction Condition was qualified by the type of pride, higher than in the authentic pride condition. See Table 1 for descriptive statistics for all conditions (and for all studies). F(3, 325) = 3.05, p = .029, = .03. For the rating of authen- Nomological Shockwaves. We next assessed the nomo- tic pride, there was no significant difference across condi- logical shockwaves of our manipulation of authentic/ tions, F(3, 325) = 1.41, p = .241. Notably, participants in hubristic pride in two ways. First, we compared means and the two Hubristic conditions reported feelings of authentic effect sizes of Positive Affect and Negative Affect in the tar- pride just as strongly as those in the Authentic condition get experimental conditions with those in the Control con- and in the Control condition. By contrast, we found signif- dition (see Table 2). Second, we compared item-level effect icant differences across conditions on the rating of hubris- sizes of all filler items and visualized the patterns in one tic pride, F(3, 325) = 7.86, p < .001, = .07. Participants figure (see Figure 6 for all studies). Any increase or decrease in the Hubristic condition adapted from Ashton-James and observed in the target experimental conditions relative to Tracy (2012), Ho et al. (2016), and Tracy and Robins (2007) the control condition can infer “shocks” caused by the ma- showed the highest ratings of hubristic pride (M = 2.04) nipulations (Chester & Lasko, 2021). compared to the other three conditions: the Authentic con- Though none of the observed effect sizes reached statis- dition (M = 1.53), the Hubristic condition (M = 1.55) in- tical significance (ps > .05), they were generally in the ex- spired by Holbrook et al. (2014), and the Control condition pected directions. The Authentic condition increased Pos- (M = 1.42), ps < .001. itive Affect (d = 0.32) and decreased Negative Affect (d These findings provide mixed support for the effective- = -0.17). The Hubristic condition adapted from Ashton- ness of the Relived Emotion Task as a tool to induce the James and Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016) slightly in- two facets of pride. On the one hand, the method differ- creased both Positive Affect (d = 0.27) and Negative Affect entiated hubristic pride between conditions. Yet, this out- (d = 0.22), suggesting that the recalled experience of hubris come may have depended on instructions explicitly ask- generated mixed emotions. More specifically, at the item ing participants to feel “pretentious” or “stuck-up,” with level we observed that this condition slightly increased rat- the same or similar terms being part of the dependent ings of hostile and aggressive. The Hubristic condition in- variables. Despite this explicit instruction, mean levels of spired by Holbrook et al. (2014) did not result in any effects. hubristic pride were generally low across all conditions. On Overall, we conclude that the Relived Emotion Task gener- the other hand, and perhaps more critically, the Relived ally produced the expected nomological shockwaves for au- Emotion Task failed to induce different levels of authentic thentic pride, but the effects were unreliable and small. pride across conditions; moreover, authentic pride was al- Collabra: Psychology 6 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Table 1. Overview and descriptive statistics of the present experiments Authentic Hubristic Study Method Condition Reference n M (SD) M SD 1 The Relived Emotion Task Authentic Self 84 4.45 (1.33) 1.53 (0.80) Hubristic 84 4.21 (1.59) 2.04 (1.24) Hubristic 85 4.11 (1.66) 1.55 (0.90) Control 84 4.02 (1.27) 1.42 (0.68) 2 Person perception task Authentic Self 59 4.81 (1.23) 1.63 (0.82) Hubristic 60 4.80 (1.20) 1.89 (1.05) Control 58 3.72 (1.39) 1.77 (0.97) 3 Leadership aptitude test Prestige Self 54 5.49 (1.34) 1.74 (1.28) Others 52 5.78 (1.00) 3.13 (1.61) Dominance Self 75 5.57 (1.35) 1.74 (1.06) Others 49 5.59 (1.30) 3.43 (1.61) Control Self 49 3.32 (1.47) 1.52 (0.91) Others 49 3.93 (1.30) 1.88 (0.95) 4 Leadership aptitude test Prestige Self 57 5.34 (1.30) 1.97 (1.13) Others 5.52 (1.40) 2.93 (1.51) Dominance Self 50 5.53 (1.43) 2.17 (1.32) Others 5.80 (1.31) 2.87 (1.62) Notes. Authentic pride and hubristic pride are measured on a 7-point Likert scale. Adopted from Ashton-James and Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016); Adopted from Holbrook et al. (2014). Table 2. Nomological shockwaves of manipulations of state-level authentic/hubristic pride and relevant constructs with control conditions as a baseline comparison (effect size) Experimental Condition a b Study 1 Authentic Hubristic Hubristic Authentic 0.33 0.13 0.05 Hubristic 0.14 0.61** 0.16 Positive 0.39 0.27 0.18 Negative -0.13 0.22 0.16 Study 2 Authentic Hubristic Authentic 0.83** 0.84** Hubristic -0.16 0.12 Positive 0.68** 0.66** Insecure -0.76** -0.49* Hostile -0.49* -0.18 Study 3 Prestige Dominance Authentic 1.54** 1.61** Hubristic 0.19 0.22 Positive 1.27** 1.59** Negative -0.14 -0.18 Notes. * p <. 05; ** p < .01. All values represent Cohen’s d. Higher positive effect sizes d indicate higher scores of the manipulated construct relative to the control baseline condition. a b Bold coefficients are significant at p < .05. Manipulation of hubristic pride conceptualized by Ashton-James and Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016); Manipulation of hubristic pride conceptualized by Holbrook et al. (2014). Study 4 is excluded since it did not have a control condition. Collabra: Psychology 7 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Table 3. Pearson r between the target variables across positive affect, and this means that authentic pride repre- the current experiments sents genuine positivity. However, hubristic pride covaried with negative affect such as hostility and aggression more Authentic pride Hubristic pride strongly than with positive affect. What emerges is a com- plex picture of hubristic pride as a pride emotion. If pride Study 1 is a positively valenced emotion and occurs in response to Hubristic pride .13* – success, why would one feel hostile and aggressive? The in- Positive affect .73** .18** struction to feel “pretentious” in the Hubristic condition Negative affect -.19** .47** adapted from Ashton-James and Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016) may have introduced unexpected variability in par- Study 2 ticipants’ answers to the instruction for various reasons. We Hubristic pride .13 – sought to provide more insights into this puzzle in the sub- Positive affect .82** .21** sequent studies. Insecure affect -.34** .37** Hostile affect -.10 .51** Study 2 Study 3 Given the inconsistent findings of Study 1, we turned Hubristic pride .18** – to developing a standardized task using a false-feedback Positive affect .83** .24** paradigm, in which participants’ experience is ostensibly Negative affect -.06 .45** manipulated by means of positive/negative/control feed- backs that are independent of participant’s objective per- Study 4 formance. Our paradigm was inspired by Williams and Hubristic pride -.10 – DeSteno (2008) who administered a dot estimation task, in Positive affect .76** .05 which participants counted the number of dots on a screen Negative affect -.13 .42** with manipulation of positive feedback on accuracy. Partic- ipants who thought they did well were more likely to feel Notes. * p <. 05; ** p < .01. Study 4 only includes participants’ self-ratings. pride. We sought to make our performance task more en- gaging by adopting an interpersonal perception task by An- Nomological Networks. Next, we assessed correlations derson et al. (2012), where participants were shown video between the ratings across all conditions (see Table 3; see clips of interpersonal interactions and then asked to predict Figure 7 for item-level correlations). Consistent with prior characteristics of the people in the materials. Anderson et research, authentic pride positively correlated with Positive al. (2012) induced overconfidence among participants by Affect, r = .73, but negatively with Negative Affect, r = presenting false information as to the accuracy of their pre- -.19. Hubristic pride showed mixed patterns: it positively dictions, generating positive/negative self-evaluations. We correlated with Positive Affect, r = .18, but more strongly supplemented the interpersonal perception task by adopt- with Negative Affect, r = .47. Figure 7 more clearly shows ing a feedback protocol used by Mahadevan et al. (2019), that hubristic pride correlated most strongly with negative who manipulated state narcissism by providing visual in- items such as hostile and aggressive. formation about social rank relative to the normative stan- dard. Discussion Arguably, a standardized task such as the interpersonal perception task compensates for a notable limitation of Study 1 showed that there were indeed small, but sig- the Relived Emotion Task. Writing about one’s past expe- nificant differences in the extent to which different ma- rience should not equate to manipulating antecedents of nipulations elicited self-ratings of hubristic pride. In the pride. Ideally, an experimenter should manipulate the ac- condition with instructions derived from Ashton-James and tual process by which participants achieve something. A Tracy (2012) and Ho et al. (2016), there were slightly ele- critical element of the Relived Emotion Task is that partic- vated levels of hubristic pride compared to the other con- ipants report feelings of pride in a variety of contexts, and ditions. Yet, this manipulation unexpectedly induced au- not all pride-inducing episodes are directly related to sta- thentic pride as well: there was no difference in levels of tus attainment. It is possible that, as we found in our Study self-rated authentic pride across all experimental condi- 1, participants may write about circumstances where they tions. This finding fails to support the most liberal standard felt aggressive and hostile in response to achievement. To of successful manipulation illustrated in Figure 1a. In spite the extent that pride is associated with status (Henrich & of the fact that we replicated some of the earlier findings, Gil-White, 2001), and to the extent that success in a per- the Relived Emotion Task raises a potential concern about formance situation does indeed convey success, the Relived the process underlying these ratings—namely an inability Emotion Task produces unwelcome variability in our quest to differentiate the intensity of felt authentic pride ratings to find valid and effective means of eliciting pride. By con- between experimental conditions. trast, the interpersonal perception task can control specific We found inconsistent support for the nomological net- processes by which participants attain success relative to works of state-level hubristic pride suggested by the theory others with a clear visual aid. of Tracy and Robins (2007). Authentic pride covaried with Collabra: Psychology 8 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Participants in both the authentic pride condition and analysis of Schwartz (1992) were adopted. Participants the hubristic pride condition received the same perfor- rated values of each person using a 5-point scale. mance feedback but were led to attribute their success (a False-feedback of Interpersonal Perception. Participants high score compared to other participants) to either mal- received varying feedback on the interpersonal perception leable or stable personal characteristics. Participants in the task, depending on the experimental condition to which control condition received feedback that their performance they were assigned. We manipulated participants’ pride was average. As in Study 1, we explored the nomological feelings by changing stable vs. unstable descriptions about shockwaves of the manipulations and nomological net- their strengths assessed by the interpersonal perception works with a host of theoretically relevant constructs. task. In both authentic pride and hubristic pride conditions, participants’ achievements were attributed to distinct as- Sample & Experimental Design pects of their performance. We referenced previous re- search to identify several key dimensions on which authen- Because this manipulation was novel, we did not have tic pride should differ from hubristic pride (see Appendix prespecified effect size comparable to previous research. Table A4). Among them, we aimed to tap into four dimen- We therefore aimed to detect a medium effect size with α = sions: (1) antecedent (behavior vs. self), (2) attribution (un- .05, and β = .80. When applied to a three-cell design, the re- stable vs. stable; effort vs. talent), (3) communion (high quired sample size was 158. We collected a total of 182 par- vs. low), and (4) competency (skill vs. talent). We predicted ticipants, five of whom were excluded due to missing data. that success as a result of unstable characteristics would Participants (53% female) were undergraduate students at elicit authentic pride, while stable characteristics would a large Western U.S. public university who were randomly elicit hubristic pride. At the end of the feedback, we os- assigned to either authentic (n = 59), hubristic (n = 60), tensibly offered participants an extra opportunity to par- or control (n = 58) conditions. Participants received par- ticipate in an interview about their performance as an op- tial course fulfillment upon participating in the online sur- portunity for them to get involved in future research. This vey. Participant demographics are summarized in Appen- additional message was meant to increase realism and elicit dix, Table A1. a sense of social approval and a clear signal that others are impressed with their high score. The structure of descrip- Method tions for the control condition were kept in line with those of pride conditions to maintain consistency and compara- Interpersonal Perception Task. The cover story read that bility. Our Appendix provides each feedback in detail. the research was about developing an interpersonal percep- Self-rated Pride Feelings. Again, we used Tracy and tion task to predict students’ career success. Participants Robins’ (2007) scale of authentic pride ( = .92, = .94) were assured that they would receive an accuracy score and hubristic pride ( =.88, = .91). As before, we con- based on the match between their answers and actual an- ducted a CFA, which supported the two-factor model with a swers we had collected from individuals displayed in the good fit similar to Study 1. photos. In the first task, participants saw a series of 24 fa- Filler Items. We extended a list of filler items in addition cial photos and predicted the age of each individual. In the to those used in Study 1. We added hubristic-related items second task, they saw a series of eight facial photos and and additional items related to negative affect of PANAS- judged the personality of each individual. In the third task, X (Watson & Clark, 1999). We ran an exploratory factor participants saw a series of eight facial photos and rated analysis and retained a three-factors solution with oblimin how these individuals might have responded to ten value rotation: we replicated the two-factors solution by Watson ratings. and Clark (1999) and our own Study 1. But for the present Face Photos. The Chicago Face Database (Ma et al., purpose, we deemed a three-factors solution to be more ad- 2015) provides a set of high-resolution, standardized pho- equate because it allowed us to differentiate an Insecure tographs of human faces. Photos included in this database Affect factor (afraid, scared, nervous, jittery, guilty, ashamed, have norming data for varying attributes such as race, age, upset, distressed, = .89, = .92), and a Hostile Affect attractiveness, or prototypicality. We selected 24 photos factor (irritable, hostile, aggressive, = .77, = .80) that vary on race (White vs. Black vs. Asian vs. Latino), gen- along with a Positive Affect (gifted, exceptional, enthusiastic, der (male vs. female), and percentile on attractiveness (49th interested, determined, excited, inspired, alert, active, intellec- vs. 50th vs. 51st). We provide these photographs in the Ap- tual, creative, curious, = .92, = .93). pendix. Personality Ratings. Personality items were adopted Procedure from a 10-item measure of the Big Five personality dimen- sion (Gosling et al., 2003). The instruction was modified so Participant first worked on the interpersonal perception that item descriptions were directed towards the facial pho- task and then received the performance feedback. Subse- tos. Participants rated the personality of each person the quently, participants rated their current feelings. Following photographs using a 7-point scale. some demographic questions, they were thanked and de- Value ratings. Value items were adopted from Schwartz briefed. (1992). For the sake of brevity, only value contents that scored the highest importance for each dimension in the Collabra: Psychology 9 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 3. Ratings for different feedback conditions and pride ratings in Study 2 spectively. The Unstable feedback produced a significant Result decrease in Insecure Affect and Hostile Affect, d = -0.76 We conducted a 2 within (Pride Rating: Authentic vs. and d = -0.49, respectively. On the other hand, the Stable Hubristic) x 3 between (Feedback Condition: Unstable vs. feedback produced weaker decreases in Insecure Affect and Stable vs. Control) mixed-factorial ANOVA on the rating of Hostile Affect, d = -0.49 and d = -0.18, respectively. Figure pride. Both the main effects of Pride Rating and Feedback 6 further corroborates these findings by showing that nega- Condition were significant, F(1, 174) = 585.52, p < .001, tive items such as ashamed and guilty had the highest (neg- = .77, and F(2, 174) = 8.19, p < .001, = .09, respectively. ative) effect sizes. This suggests that those who received In general, participants reported far greater authentic pride average feedback in the Control condition felt greater neg- ative affect. Taken together, the Unstable manipulation de- than hubristic pride regardless of feedback conditions, M diff = 2.68, 95% CI [2.45, 2.91]. signed to induce authentic pride reliably produced expected The significant main effect of Feedback was qualified by changes in positive and negative affect. However, the Stable a Pride Rating x Feedback Condition interaction, F(2, 174) manipulation designed to induce hubristic pride only in- creased positive affect but did not reliably increase negative = 11.27, p < .001, = .11, where both attribution feed- affect, highlighting the difficulty of inducing negative affect backs significantly induced authentic pride but not hubris- by positive feedback. tic pride. For the rating of authentic pride, we found sig- Nomological Networks. We next assessed correlations nificant differences across feedback conditions, F(2, 174) = between the ratings (see Table 3 and Figure 7). Consistent 14.25, p < .001, = .14. Participants in the Unstable feed- with Study 1, authentic pride correlated positively with back condition (M = 4.81) and the Stable feedback condi- Positive Affect, r = .82, but negatively with both Insecure tion (M = 4.80) showed higher ratings of authentic pride Affect (r = -.34) and Hostile Affect (r = -.10). By contrast, than those in the Control feedback condition (M = 3.72), hubristic pride produced more nuanced correlations. ps < .001. However, there was no significant difference be- Hubristic pride did show a positive correlation with Positive tween the two feedback conditions, t(174) = 0.02, p = .999. Affect (r = .21), but more strong correlations with Insecure For the rating of hubristic pride, however, there were no Affect (r = .37) and with Hostile Affect (r = .51). Notably, significant differences across conditions, F(2, 174) = 1.10, p hubristic pride correlated more strongly with aggressive and = .336. Across feedback conditions, mean levels of hubris- hostile than with guilty and ashamed (see Figure 7). These tic pride were fairly low (see also Figure 3). In contrast to correlations highlight the socially aversive nature of Study 1, Study 2 was successful in inducing authentic pride hubristic pride. Overall, our analyses of the nomological but not hubristic pride. networks of authentic/hubristic pride revealed consistent Nomological Shockwaves. We compared effect sizes of findings with Study 1. all ratings in the experimental conditions with those in the Control condition (see Table 2 and Figure 6). Both the Un- stable and Stable feedback conditions produced a signifi- cant increase in Positive Affect, d = 0.68 and d = 0.66, re- Collabra: Psychology 10 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... (authentic) pride (Witkower et al., 2021). We reasoned that Discussion more grandiose feedback would be necessary to make par- Study 2 showed that our manipulation was successful ticipants admit feeling a high level of hubristic pride and with regard to the induction of authentic pride, overcoming some degrees of hostile emotions than the previous proce- the limitation of Study 1. Compared to the Relived Emotion dures. We also inserted multiple feedbacks between tasks Task in Study 1, the interpersonal perception task gener- to ensure that participants did feel competent in the ex- ated a greater intensity of authentic pride, perhaps because perimental conditions. We assumed that feedback on domi- of the standardized procedure. However, the interpersonal nant leadership in this way would elicit greater hubris (and perception task did not induce a strong sense of hubristic greater hostility and aggression) than would a mild compli- pride, and the ratings of authentic pride were not separa- ment on one’s stable characteristics as in the case of Study ble across the two attribution manipulations. Again, Study 2. We expected that participants who were shown to have a 2 failed to meet the most liberal standard of successful ma- dominant-leadership to experience hubristic pride and that nipulation illustrated in Figure 1. Moreover, the average participants who were shown to have prestige-leadership to feedback in the Control condition produced a greater in- experience authentic pride. tensity of negative affect, implying that participants’ lower To address the third point, Study 3 included a novel ele- status were made salient with clear visual information of ment to detect social desirability against reporting hubris- the social rank. tic pride. We built upon a prior work that participants were Study 2 enabled us to assess the nature of hubristic generally willing to infer hubristic-pride expressions of oth- pride via nomological shockwaves and networks. A notable ers (Wubben et al., 2012). In Study 3, we asked our partic- insight obtained from Study 2 is the disconnect between ipants in one condition to predict how others would feel the nomological shockwaves and networks with regard to in the same situation irrespective of how they themselves hubristic pride. At the item level of nomological networks, feel. If social desirability is unique to ratings of hubristic hubristic pride covaried with a range of negative items such pride, we should expect to see differences between self-rat- as hostile, aggressive, shamed, and guilt (Figure 7). However, ings and others-ratings of hubristic pride but not of au- it was clear that positive feedback produced a decrease in thentic pride. those negative items: people’s experiences with personal success were clearly positive regardless of attribution. The Sample & Experimental Design results of Study 2 imply that, because hubristic pride cor- Participants were recruited at a large Western U.S. public relates with both positive and negative emotions, the kind university and were randomly assigned to either Prestige x of event that produces strong hubristic pride must increase Self-rating (n = 54), Prestige x Others-rating (n = 52), Dom- one’s status but also elicit socially aversive experience, and inance x Self-rating (n = 75), Dominance x Others-rating (n people must admit to such negative feelings. Although we = 49), Control x Self-rating (n = 49), or Control x Others-rat- are not aware of a type of social situation that would typi- ing (n = 49) conditions. With this total sample size of 328 cally induce both status and negative feelings, Study 3 and (70% female) participants, we were able have .99 power to 4 sought to strengthen and replicate findings of Study 2. detect an effect of f = .25, assuming an α = .05. Participants Study 3 received partial course fulfillment upon participating in the online survey. Participant demographics are summarized in Study 3 aimed to address three points: (1) intensity of Table A1 of the Appendix. hubristic pride rating; (2) inability to differentiate authen- tic pride from hubristic pride; and (3) social desirability of Method reporting hubristic pride. To address the first two points, we Interpersonal Perception Task. We used the same photo modified the interpersonal perception task used in Study 2 materials and personality scales as Study 2 for the interper- to be more explicit about social rank in the hope of increas- sonal perception task. ing intensity of hubristic pride and even greater aggres- Leadership Competency Task. Using the same photos as sion and hostility through dominance-related feedback. We Study 2, participants judged leadership competency of each did so by adopting multiple tasks in the context of a bogus photo based on the leadership style questionnaire by Van leadership aptitude test—a task frequently used to manip- Vugt and Ahuja (2011) and two seven-point bipolar scales: ulate sense of power (e.g., Fast & Chen, 2009, Study 3). In “Likely to be a follower–Likely to be a leader,” and “Coop- Study 3, participants performed tasks similar to the inter- erative–Competitive.” personal perception task in Study 2, but the feedback re- Emotion Recognition Task. We also added a novel task, lated to participants’ leadership aptitude. We linked this which ostensibly assessed participants’ emotional recogni- manipulation to the literature on prestige and dominance, tion skills using facial photos provided by FACES (Ebner assuming that dominance (prestige) gives rise to hubristic 2 We initially recruited 30 participants in the Dominance x Self condition for a pilot study. Since excluding these participants did not influ- ence the results, we include them in the present analysis. Collabra: Psychology 11 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... et al., 2010). Participants were presented with a sequence had completed each of these two tasks, they received brief of six facial photos, each with one of six emotional ex- feedback which was positive (or neutral) and unrelated to pressions (anger, disgust, fear, happy, sad, control), an or- their actual performance. In the third task, participants saw der randomized for each individual participant. For each of a series of eight facial photos and rated how the individuals the six emotions, we had available six different facial im- were feeling. At the end of the third task, participants were ages, which varied by age (young, middle, old) and gen- received false feedback: “Your overall accuracy for emotion der (male, female), all showing a white individual. For each recognition: Excellent (Average).” of emotional display, we selected one of these six images We then explained to participants that the next page at random. With each photo, participants were presented would display their leadership aptitude in comparison with with a scale that read, “Which emotion best describes the the last three participants who took the survey. After a expression?” and selected their answer from one of the pause of 60 seconds, allegedly for the system to compile a six response alternatives among Angry, Disgusted, Fearful, summary report, participants received a one-page report of Happy, Sad, Surprised, and Neutral. their leadership aptitude (see Appendix for details). False-feedback of Leadership Aptitude. Similar to Study Immediately after receiving this feedback, participants 2, participants received performance-independent feedback rated their feelings. In the self-rating condition, partici- on the leadership aptitude, depending on the experimental pants rated their current moods in the same way as Study condition to which they were assigned. We sought to ma- 1 and 2. In the other-rating condition, participants read the nipulate participants’ pride feelings by changing descrip- following instruction: tions of the type of leadership style on which participants “Now you received the feedback on your leadership had a high score. As in Study 2, we referenced previous re- quality. We are now interested in how others might feel search to identify several key dimensions on which pres- about the summary report you just received. If others tige should differ from dominance in relation to pride expe- had experienced the exact same thing, how would they riences (see Table A3 of Appendix). The prestige feedback feel? Please predict how others might feel. Consider emphasized leadership associated with respect from others, that others might feel in ways that they are reluctant wisdom, skill, and great interpersonal skill; the dominance to admit. This should not constrain you. Please predict feedback emphasized assertiveness, directiveness, author- how others would feel deep down inside.” ity, talent, and intimidation; the control condition empha- They then answered a battery of demographics and per- sized average performance on these traits. See the Appen- sonality questionnaires and were debriefed. dix, Study 2 for complete descriptions of each feedback. Self-rated Pride Feelings. Again, we used Tracy and Result Robins’ (2007) scale of authentic pride = .97, = .98) and hubristic pride = .96, = .96). We conducted a 2 within (Pride Rating: Authentic vs. Filler Items. Items were identical to those used in Study Hubristic) x 3 between (Leadership Condition: Prestige vs. 1. We ran an exploratory factor analysis and again obtained Dominance vs. Control) x 2 between (Reference: Self vs. a two-factor solution with oblimin rotation: Positive Affect Others) mixed-factorial ANOVA on the rating of pride. Sim- (enthusiastic, interested, determined, excited, inspired, alert, ilar to Study 1 and 2, participants reported greater authen- active, powerful, creative, .93, = .96) and Negative tic pride than hubristic pride regardless of leadership con- Affect (guilty, ashamed, aggressive, hostile, = .84, = ditions and references, F(1, 322) = 820.20, p < .001, = .72, .90). M = 2.81, 95% CI [2.59, 3.02]. This main effect was qual- diff ified by a Pride Rating x Leadership Condition interaction, Procedure F(2, 322) = 17.25, p < .001, = .10. The difference between authentic pride and hubristic pride was significant in the Our cover story read that the research was about as- Control condition, t(97) = 11.94, p < .001, M = 1.93, 95% sessing a skill to accurately read others, a highly critical diff CI [1.61, 2.25], but the difference was much greater in the skill in today’s diverse society. Participants were told that Prestige and Dominance conditions, t(105) = 16.99, p < .001, their performance score would be provided to them at the M = 3.21, 95% CI [2.84, 3.59], and t(123) = 17.72, p < .001, end, based on three tasks: judging the personality of others, diff M = 3.17, 95% CI [2.81, 3.52], respectively. judging the leadership competency of others, and emotion diff We found a main effect of Leadership Condition on the recognition ability. rating of pride, F(2, 322) = 73.07, p < .001, = .31. The In the first task, participants saw a series of eight facial Prestige condition induced greater authentic pride than the photos and predicted the personality of each individual Control condition, M = 2.01, p < .001, 95% CI [1.57, 2.44], shown in the photos. In the second task, they saw a se- diff but not greater than the Dominance condition, M = 0.05, quence of eight facial photos and judged leadership com- diff p = .942, 95% CI [-0.35, 0.47]. Similarly, the Prestige condi- petency by guessing how the individuals in the photos had tion induced greater hubristic pride than the Control con- rated themselves using the same scales. Once participants dition, M = 0.72, p < .001, 95% CI [0.26, 1.19], but not diff 3 We acknowledge that there was a grammatical error in the original material. Collabra: Psychology 12 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... greater than the Dominance condition, M = 0.01, p = .997, positive items in Study 3 were generally greater than those diff 95% CI [-0.43, 0.45]. Overall, the Prestige and the Domi- found in Study 2, supporting a greater intensity of the cur- nance conditions did not differ from each other in inducing rent manipulation. More specifically, the Dominance condi- both types of pride. These results suggest that the current tion produced slightly greater effect sizes than the Prestige feedback manipulations were successful for inducing both condition across all items. At the item level, the Dominance types of pride relative to the Control condition even though condition increased aggressive slightly, but this effect was the distinction between Prestige and Dominance did not not significant. Taken together, the manipulation of status, distinguish the two types of pride. whether it was prestige or dominance, produced intense Our central concern in Study 3 is how reference of rating positive affect but not negative affect. changes the reporting of pride experience. The main effect Nomological Networks. The analysis of nomological of Reference was significant, F(1, 322) = 51.63, p < .001, networks generated clear convergence with Study 1 and 2 (see Table 3 and Figure 7). Authentic pride correlated with = .14, M = 0.66, 95% CI [0.35, 0.98]. This main effect re- diff Positive Affect, r = .83, but not with Negative Affect, r = veals that when participants rated how others would feel in response to the leadership feedback they received, they -.13. Hubristic pride correlated only weakly with Positive Affect, r = .24, but more strongly with Negative Affect, r reported greater pride regardless of the types of pride and = .45. Item-level correlations more clearly illuminated the conditions. This effect was not moderated by the Leadership nature of hubristic pride as a mixed emotion as it correlated Condition effect, F(2, 322) = 1.32, p = .268. More impor- with items such as hostile, aggressive, ashamed, guilty, and tantly, we found a significant Pride Rating x Leadership superior (Figure 7). Condition x Reference interaction effect, F(2, 322) = 8.05, p < .001, = .05. This three-way interaction suggests that Discussion the Reference x Leadership Condition interaction effect de- pended on the type of pride being evaluated. For the rating Study 3 sought to develop a strong manipulation of of authentic pride, the Leadership Condition x Reference hubristic pride by giving participants blatant feedback on interaction was not significant, F(2, 322) = 1.37, p = .255, their dominance-leadership aptitude. This manipulation implying that the nature of reference did not depend on did not produce a strong distinction between self-ratings the experimental condition. However, the Leadership Con- of hubristic pride between conditions but induced a greater dition x Reference interaction was significant for the rating level of authentic pride than hubristic pride. Apparently, of hubristic pride, F(2, 322) = 7.98, p < .001, = .05. In participant were flattered whether their high performance both the Prestige and the Dominance conditions, partic- indicated dominance characteristics or not. This result ipants’ estimates of others’ hubristic pride were signifi- again fails to meet the most liberal standard of successful cantly higher than those who rated their own hubristic manipulation illustrated in Figure 1. pride in response to the same leadership feedback: M = diff The analyses of nomological shockwaves and networks 1.39, p < .001, 95% CI [0.82, 1.95], and M = 1.69, p < diff showed patterns similar to those in Study 1-2. When par- .001, 95% CI [1.17, 2.21], respectively. However, the Ref- ticipants received positive feedback on leadership aptitude, erence effect on the rating of hubristic pride was minimal they felt more positive than negative, with the dominance- in the Control condition, M = 0.36, p = .058, 95% CI diff leadership feedback showing slightly stronger effects than [-0.01, 0.73]. In contrast with the rating of authentic pride, the prestige-leadership feedback. By means of positive we observed a stronger effect of reference on the rating of feedback, it was unlikely to observe any increases in nega- hubristic pride. That is, participants’ ratings of hubristic tive feelings, which should covary with hubristic pride. pride systematically differed based on the type of leader- Though our manipulation was not successful, we clari- ship feedback they received and whom they were evaluat- fied a potential roadblock to finding hubristic pride: par- ing. The fact that we did not find such a stark effect of ticipants’ ratings differed systematically depending on reference on the rating of authentic pride supports our pre- whether they rated how others would react to the same diction: hubristic pride carries a more negative connota- feedback and the type of feelings they rated. When par- tion, which participants did not readily report, than does ticipants were told to indicate their own feelings, they did authentic pride. not necessarily report intense levels of hubristic pride; yet, Nomological Shockwaves. As with Study 1 and 2, we participants predicted that others would experience much compared effect sizes of all self-ratings in the target lead- greater hubristic pride in response to the same leadership ership conditions with those in the Control condition (see feedback. This differential responding was stronger for the Table 2 and Figure 6). Patterns of effect sizes were highly leadership feedback conditions compared to the control similar across the experimental conditions. Both the Pres- condition. This type of interaction effect was not observed tige and Dominance conditions produced a significant in- for the ratings of authentic pride, where participants were crease in Positive Affect: d = 1.54; and d = 1.61, respectively. more willing to report greater ratings of authentic pride re- Both conditions produced a small decrease in Negative Af- gardless of the feedback conditions. Our results potentially fect, d = -0.14; and d = -0.18, but these effects did not reach illuminate social desirability of suppressing socially aver- statistical significance (ps > .27). This pattern suggests that sive feelings such as hubristic pride. those who received average feedback in the Control con- dition did not feel particularly negative such as ashamed and guilty. Figure 6 shows that the observed effect sizes in Collabra: Psychology 13 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 4. Pride ratings for different conditions, references, and types of pride in Study 3 Study 4 Procedure Study 4 aimed to replicate Study 3 to further confirm ro- The procedure was identical to Study 3 with one ex- bustness of social desirability of reporting hubristic pride. ception. Whereas in Study 3 self and other-ratings were Study 4 was identical to Study 3 except that Study 4 was manipulated between participants, in the present investi- a 2 x 2 mixed-model design: a between-subject condition gation participants rated both their own feelings and, sub- (Leadership Condition: Prestige vs. Dominance) and a sequently, imagined how hypothetical others would feel. within-subject condition (Reference: Self vs. Others). Be- Immediately after receiving the leadership aptitude feed- cause our central focus was on differentiating prestige and back, participants rated their own feelings first. Partici- dominance (and attendant forms of pride), unlike Study 3, pants did not receive any advance warning that they would the present study did not include a control condition. All be rating others’ feelings as well, which followed immedi- participants first rated their own feelings and subsequently ately afterwards. We did not counterbalance the order of imagined how others would react to the same leadership rating because we did not want their other-ratings to influ- aptitude feedback. ence their own ratings. Sample & Experimental Design Result We had a total of 114 participants, seven of whom were We performed a 2 within (Pride Rating: Authentic vs. excluded due to missing data. Study 4 was based on a 2 be- Hubristic) x 2 within (Reference: Self vs. Others) x 2 be- tween (Leadership Condition: Prestige vs. Dominance) x 2 tween (Leadership Condition: Prestige vs. Dominance) within (Reference: Self vs. Others) mixed design: partici- mixed-factorial ANOVA on the rating of pride (see Table pants were randomly assigned to either a Prestige (n = 57) 1). The main effect of Leadership Condition was not sig- or Dominance (n = 50) condition. Assuming an α = .05, this nificant, F(1, 105) = 1.03, p = .314. Both the main effects allowed us to have .99 power to detect an interaction of f = of Pride Rating and Reference were significant: F(1, 105) = .25. Participants (69% female) received partial course credit 314.50, p < .001, η = 0.75, and F(1, 105) = 25.36, p < .001, upon participating in the online survey. Participant demo- η = 0.19, respectively. Participants’ ratings were greater graphics are summarized in Appendix, Table A1. The study for authentic pride compared to hubristic pride, M = 3.05, diff was conducted at a large Western U.S. public university. p < .001, 95% CI [2.78, 3.33], and when they imagined rat- ings of others compared to themselves, M = 0.53, p < diff Method .001, 95% CI [0.33, 0.73]. These pattens replicated results found in Study 3 (see Figure 5). All materials were identical to those used in Study 3. The central goal of Study 4 was to replicate participants’ apprehension to report hubristic pride. As before, the Ref- erence main effect was qualified by a significant Pride Rat- Collabra: Psychology 14 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 5. Pride ratings for different conditions, references, and types of pride in Study 4 Note. Slopes represent individual participants. Participants first rated their own authentic/hubristic pride and then predicted responses of others. Only a few participants expected others-ratings of hubristic pride to be lower than their own self-ratings. ing x Reference interaction, F(1, 105) = 11.74, p < .001, η ure 1b). We examined whether authentic (hubristic) pride = 0.10. The Reference effect was primarily found for the manipulation increased ratings of authentic (hubristic) rating of hubristic pride, where participants imagined that pride compared to the other pride manipulation. We com- others would experience hubristic pride more strongly than puted fixed effects, weighting the mean effect size by sam- themselves, M = 0.84, p < .001, 95% CI [0.57, 1.11]. But ple size (Goh et al., 2016; see Table 4 for effect sizes). Over- diff this differential responding was not significant for the rat- all, the combined effect for authentic pride was negligible, ing of authentic pride, M = 0.22, p = .114, 95% CI [-0.05, Mean d = 0.011, 95% CI [-0.161, 0.184]. This means that diff 0.49]. Taken together, participants’ ratings of hubristic the manipulations designed to increase hubristic pride also pride systematically varied: participants were more reluc- evoked authentic pride just as strongly as did the manipu- tant to admit their own feelings of hubristic pride compared lations designed to induce authentic pride. to admitting their own feelings of hubristic pride. We next meta-analyzed the effect sizes of hubristic-pride Nomological networks. Results of nomological networks manipulation relative to authentic-pride manipulation on were highly similar to those of Study 3 (See Table 3 and Fig- the self-rating of hubristic pride across our four studies us- ure 7). ing fixed effects, weighting the mean effect size by sam- ple size. The overall effect was in the predicted direction, Discussion mean d = 0.252, 95% CI [0.079, 0.425], such that the hubris- tic-pride manipulations induced participants’ self-ratings Study 4 replicated and corroborated Study 3. The within- of hubristic pride more strongly than the authentic-pride subject design of Study 4 makes it clear that participants manipulations. may be reluctant to express their feelings of hubristic pride, For comparison, we also meta-analyzed the previously whereas they have little problem expressing feelings of au- published research that reported an experimental manip- thentic pride. ulation of hubristic vs. authentic pride (Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012; Ho et al., 2016). Results are summarized in Mini Meta-Analyses Table A5 of the Appendix for self-rated authentic pride and self-rated hubristic pride. As is evident there, the five stud- We present two mini meta-analyses of differences be- ies reported in Ashton-James and Tracy (2012) and Ho et tween authentic vs. hubristic pride manipulations for the al. (2016) reported a combined effect of d = 0.377, 95% CI self-ratings of authentic/hubristic pride across four studies. [0.149, 0.605] in the induction of self-rated authentic pride. We draw on the two-facet theory of pride by Tracy and Likewise, they reported a combined effect of d = 0.974, 95% Robins (2007) and evaluate the most stringent criteria sug- CI [0.744, 1.205] in the induction of self-rated hubristic gested by the theory: (1) authentic pride is independent pride. Clearly, these effect sizes are much larger than the of hubristic pride; and (2) an experimental manipulation ones we observed across our four studies. should increase only one facet relative to the other (see Fig- Collabra: Psychology 15 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 6. Item-level nomological shockwaves of experimental manipulation for Study 1-3 Note. X-axis represents Cohen’s d with a higher positive value representing an increase relative to control condition. Bars are separated by experimental conditions. AP = Authentic pride condition; HP (T & R) = Hubristic pride manipulation inspired by Tracy and Robins (2007); HP (Holbrook) = Hubristic pride manipulation inspired by Holbrook et al. (2014); Unstable = Unstable attribution manipulation; Stable = Stable attribution manipulation. Collabra: Psychology 16 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Figure 7. Item-level nomological networks of authentic/hubristic pride for Study 1-4 Note. X-axis represents Pearson correlation coefficient (r). Only self-rated scores are included. Collabra: Psychology 17 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Table 4. Mini meta-analysis of the present studies Dependent variable Cohen's d Authentic pride Hubristic pride Experimental induction of hubristic vs. authentic pride Study 1 (T & R only) 167 0.164 0.488 Study 2 (Unstable vs. Stable) 119 0.008 0.276 Study 3 (Dom. vs. Prest.) 129 -0.059 0.000 Study 4 (Dom. vs. Prest.) 107 -0.139 0.164 Mini-meta-analytic estimate d 0.011 0.252 95% CI [-0.161, 0.184] [0.079, 0.425] Note. T & R = Manipulation conceptualized by Tracy and Robins (2007). Higher effect sizes d indicates higher scores of the manipulated construct. Higher effect sizes for rated au- thentic pride indicate the success of the authentic pride manipulation compared to the hubristic pride manipulation. Higher effect sizes for rated hubristic pride indicate the success of the hubristic pride manipulation compared to the authentic pride manipulation. Unstable = unstable attribution feedback; Stable = stable attribution feedback; Dom = dominance feedback condition; Prest = prestige feedback condition. General Discussion pride as raised by Holbrook et al. (2014). The authors ar- gued that Tracy and Robins’ HP Scale is a flawed mea- Our series of four studies aimed to address the ongoing surement of pride emotion, as HP items (e.g., pretentious, controversy about the construct validity of hubristic pride arrogant) correlate with self-deprecating tendencies. Our as conceptualized by Tracy and Robins’ Authentic Pride and analyses of nomological networks of hubristic pride support Hubristic Pride (AP-HP) Scales (2007). Beside the direct the criticism by Holbrook et al. (2014). We found that attempt to replicate previous manipulation using the Re- hubristic pride covaried more strongly with negative affect lived Emotion Task, we drew on relevant literature in the (e.g., hostile, aggressive, ashamed, guilty) than with positive domains of overconfidence (Anderson et al., 2012), power affect. These findings contradict the general view that pride (Fast & Chen, 2009), status (Witkower et al., 2021), and is a positive emotion that arises from success. state narcissism (Mahadevan et al., 2019) to develop a Perhaps due to the negativity associated with hubristic strong manipulation of hubristic pride. Yet, none of our pride, it was difficult to find intense levels of hubristic manipulations induced the desirable levels of authentic and pride in people’s experience of success. Our analyses of the hubristic pride consistent with the standard we set up at the nomological shockwaves (Chester & Lasko, 2021) revealed beginning (Figure 1). Whereas the hubristic-pride manipu- that any positive feedback produced significant increases lations in our studies generally increased ratings of hubris- in authentic pride and positive affect but did not signif- tic pride relative to the manipulations of authentic pride icantly produce any expected changes in hubristic pride (meta-analytic effect size, d = 0.252), we did not observe and negative affect (Study 2-3, Figure 6). Participants felt a that participants experienced hubristic pride with any in- great deal of authentic pride, even when they were asked to tensity. Most problematic is that the hubristic-pride manip- write about a hubristic episode (Study 1), when their suc- ulations generally induced strong levels of authentic pride; cess was based on talent (Study 2), or when their supe- as a result, authentic pride always overshadowed hubristic rior performance was related to dominance characteristics pride to a significant degree even in the control conditions. (Study 3-4). These results do not support the even more liberal standard We conclude that people feel authentic pride regardless of successful manipulation (Figure 1a). of how they attain success. This may correspond to the real- Our systematic analyses of experimental manipulations ity of most domains of achievement, in which success may in terms of nomological shockwaves, nomological net- be driven by a combination of both ability and effort. Con- works, and social desirability illuminated potential prob- sider world-class athletes who work hard but who must also lems that may have been previously overlooked. Below, we have a high degree of dispositional advantage to get to the evaluate Tracy and Robins’ (2007) two-facet theory of pride very top. It is unlikely that these athletes attribute their and offer specific avenues for future research in the light of success only to hard work. Even among non-athletes, we the observed findings. We then discuss our work in the con- found that people felt genuinely good about their achieve- text of reproducible and open science. ment regardless of its cause, or they were unable to evalu- ate the relative contributions of effort versus talent. Does the Present Evidence Support the Construct In sum, a clear picture emerging from our analyses is Validity of Hubristic Pride? that hubristic pride is distinct from pride and has little rel- evance with success. Recall that, according to the two-facet Our answer is no. The observed results should remind theory of pride (Tracy & Robins, 2007), both types of pride the reader of the controversy about the nature of hubristic arise from success, but the difference between authentic Collabra: Psychology 18 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... and hubristic pride is in how success is attributed to dif- Two Possible Avenues for Future Research on ferent aspects of the self (e.g., effort vs. talent). It was un- Pride likely that any personal success based on talent would in- Though our findings are by no means the definitive an- duce a strong sense of hubristic pride, which our analyses swers to settle the ongoing controversy, we are well po- discovered to be linked with negative emotions. We struggle sitioned to offer specific directions for future research on to imagine everyday events that grant one a status but in- pride. We think that there are two major directions that re- duce negative feelings in the person. Indeed, the theory is searchers can take with unique premises and challenges. mute about why stable attributions of success should elicit hostility, aggression, shame, and guilt, which we used to Defending the Two-Facet Theory of Pride assess negative affect linked with hubristic pride. The na- ture of hubristic pride emerging from our experiments may One direction is to defend the two-facet theory by Tracy align better with Holbrook et al.'s (2014) account of hubris- and Robins (2007) and continue pride research under this tic pride as overclaiming one’s unmerited success. In this framework. However, research built upon the two-facet the- definition, hubristic pride is nothing like a pride emotion ory may revise parts of the theory and overcome a few chal- associated with personal success. lenges. First, future research needs to develop a method to induce and measure hubristic pride over and above social Social Desirability of Hiding Hubristic Pride desirability. Without such a method, taking the two-facet theory of pride is tantamount to having too much faith Study 3-4 confirmed that the difficulty of inducing hubristic pride was in part due to social desirability, with in the unknown possibility of social desirability: hubristic pride really exists, but inability to observe it is a mere re- participants readily predicting feelings of hubristic pride flection of social desirability. To be sure, our mini meta- in others, which they did not report for themselves to the analytic estimate yielded a small effect of experimental same extent. However, we note that, while participants ex- pected stronger reactions of others than their own feeling manipulation for hubristic pride (d = 0.252), but this es- timate is largely driven by the Relived Emotion Task in of hubristic pride in response to the leadership feedback, Study 1. Compared to the other methods that failed to in- their estimates tended to be still low (M = 3.09, Study 3-4) duce hubristic pride, the task’s effectiveness depended on compared to their estimates of authentic pride (M = 5.67, Study 3-4). That is, hubristic pride may never be more its explicit encouragement to report a hubristic-inducing episode, and not to worry about social desirability con- salient as an emotion than authentic pride. To our knowl- cerns. However, we do not know to what extent this method edge, our research is the first to detect the possibility of so- obscures the true amount of hubristic pride people inter- cial desirability associated with expressing hubristic pride. An alternative interpretation of our data is to take the nally feel. Thus, any self-report measures of hubristic pride without an effective way to amend social desirability does observed reference effects on the ratings of hubristic pride not allow us to falsify the claim that hubristic pride exists as a general part of actor-observer asymmetry in emotion independently of authentic pride, at least in the way con- recognition. One’s success may be based on a myriad of factors, but one’s first-person account of success may de- ceptualized by Tracy and Robins (2007). Key is that re- searchers need to develop a standardized task to manipu- viate from a third-person account; accordingly, one’s self- late specific attributions of success, and a pride-inducing conscious emotions may look different to others. For ex- manipulation needs to evoke a cluster of negative feelings ample, think of Maria, an American high school senior who just enrolled at a prestigious university. Maria attributes such as guilt, shame, hostility, and aggression along with positive emotion. her success to her own hard work getting high grades and The second challenge is to dissociate the accumulated having an excellent record of extracurricular activities; she evidence on trait-level pride with state-level pride. We ac- feels a great deal of authentic pride. But her peers attribute Maria’s success to her parents giving her a tremendous fi- knowledge that trait-level studies have shown utility of psychometric properties of the AP-HP scales (Dickens & nancial advantage to extracurricular activities or consider Robins, 2020). The kind of correlations found between trait- her talent to be a product of luck. In the eyes of a beholder, level hubristic pride and various outcomes have been taken Maria’s success is less based on hard work but more on for granted as supporting the nature of hubristic pride as an privilege; hence, a display of pride on the part of Maria is emotion (e.g., Tracy et al., 2009). However, our analyses re- viewed as hubris. Yet, Maria is indifferent to social desir- veal this assumption to be unwarranted. Our experimental ability of feeling hubristic pride: she is genuinely proud of her accomplishment! This type of actor-observer asymme- work showed that state-level hubristic pride correlated with a range of negative feelings, yet people clearly felt positive try may apply to almost all emotions. Your smile represents about their success. Thus, correlations found at the trait your internal feeling of happiness, but it may elicit pity, level may imply that people who admit to label themselves envy, anger, disgust, or contempt in observers for various reasons. Our findings of reference effects on the ratings of arrogant or smug tend to have heightened self-awareness of low esteem and imperfection of their characteristics. In hubristic pride may speak to this potential nature of emo- this view, hubristic pride measured by the HP scale corre- tion recognition in the interpersonal dynamics. lates with socially maladaptive outcomes such as lower self- esteem and higher depression (Dickens & Robins, 2020). Of course, this line of evidence should not be used to defend Collabra: Psychology 19 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... the status of hubristic pride as an emotion. This conceptu- analyses of nomological shockwaves of the current manipu- alization of hubristic pride diverges from a general concept lations indicated that any kinds of positive feedback would of pride, which should be a positive emotion associated elicit authentic pride and positive feelings. In other words, with elevated status (Holbrook et al., 2014). Therefore, the manipulation of these constructs via positive feedback will accumulated evidence on personality correlates of hubristic likely elicit authentic pride as an emotional marker of ma- pride may tell us little about the nature of hubristic pride as nipulation, and pride may potentially be used as a mediator conceptualized by the original two-facet theory. But if the of the observed associations. This possibility inspires a two-facet theory conceptualizes hubristic pride as a part of bridge with other relevant areas, as pride may be an impor- general pride, then future research needs to show how ex- tant intra-personal motivation in leadership emergence (De actly one feels negative emotions in response to achieve- Cremer & Van Dijk, 2008), cooperation in a social dilemma ment and success. (Dorfman et al., 2014), or altruism (Hardy & Van Vugt, After all, one may interpret our findings as consistent 2006). The single-facet model of pride will benefit future with the two-facet theory, specifically the claim that research by encouraging research integration with fewer hubristic pride still exists. We did find that hubristic pride administrative costs. This possibility is especially relevant correlated with positive emotions to some extent, and one for researchers who collect data from a crowdsourcing plat- manipulation was successful in inducing a small amount of form in which brevity of instrument is critical. hubristic pride. However, a challenge is that authentic pride Methodological Implications in the Era of was always a more salient emotion than hubristic pride Reproducible and Open Science across all experiments. A possible interpretation of our data is that hubristic pride may exist, but it may represent a We believe that our work complements recent attention small portion of one’s pride experience when one finds rea- to the issue of manipulation check. Chester and Lasko sons to be aggressive, hostile, guilty, and shameful about (2021) coded 348 manipulations in the Journal of Personality one’s success. At times, one may find hubristic sides of suc- and Social Psychology in 2017 and found that the majority cess, whether the success was obtained unfairly or with- (80%) of these published works used the “on-the-fly” ma- out much effort. We, therefore, acknowledge that hubris- nipulation without any systematic pilot testing. In short, tic pride may exist, but it might be a complex emotion, one researchers in social psychological research spend little that is very hard to manipulate experimentally. However, time in testing the validity of experimental manipulation, we believe that any personal success would elicit greater though such work should precede replicability and repro- authentic pride than hubristic pride. From this view, it is an ducibility (Fiedler et al., 2021). The same problem may ap- overstatement that hubristic pride is a discrete emotion in- ply to the manipulation of authentic/hubristic pride. Al- dependent of authentic pride, and that both facets reliably though seemingly successful manipulation checks were arise from distinct attributions to the self. used to justify the effect of authentic/hubristic pride, no prior work had scrutinized the construct validity of state- A Single-Facet (Parsimonious) Model of Pride? level authentic/pride via systematic manipulation checks. Another direction, perhaps a more straightforward inter- Our work highlights importance of validating manipula- pretation of our results, is to favor a parsimonious view of tions prior to main experiments. As noted by many in re- pride—a single-facet view that there is only authentic pride cent years, there remains much ambiguity as to how re- (Williams & DeSteno, 2010). This view assumes that the searchers view usefulness of manipulation checks (Fayant observed social desirability effect on hubristic pride (Study et al., 2017; Hauser et al., 2018). However, one cannot guar- 3-4) is just one type of actor-observer asymmetry in emo- antee the validity of the proposed causal relationship with- tion recognition. One may feel and express authentic pride, out evidence of successful manipulation itself. As we have but the same expression may be interpreted as hubris by shown in this article, lack of evidence of valid manipula- others. In this view, there is only one (authentic) pride on tions renders reported results hard to interpret. As in the the part of actor, but the same expression is readily inter- case of prior research on authentic/hubristic pride, it is un- preted as hubris by observers, depending on the context. clear what really drove the observed difference between au- What we may call hubristic pride is an observer’s cognitive thentic/hubristic and control conditions (Ashton-James & evaluation of others who express (authentic) pride expres- Tracy, 2012; Ho et al., 2016). Manipulation checks should sion. Thus, the single-facet model of pride assumes that the be central to theory building in psychology (Fiedler et al., reference effect on self-report of hubristic pride found in 2021), but we add that inserting a manipulation check be- our Study 3-4 is something inherently natural about pride tween a treatment and an outcome measure in a main ex- (and any emotions), not a mere artifact that prevents peo- periment—and subsequently show successful manipulation ple from reporting true internal states of hubristic pride. checks—is insufficient. Researchers need to conduct more There is a virtue in parsimony. The single-facet model of pre-test studies devoted to validating manipulations. pride makes great synergies with other areas of research re- Limitations lated to status without necessarily taking a more complex view. Indeed, we adopted the present manipulation con- Our results have several limitations. One might specu- tents from experiments of overconfidence (Anderson et al., late that the online format of the manipulation methods 2012), power (Fast & Chen, 2009), status (Witkower et al., may have introduced elements that were not previously 2021), and state narcissism (Mahadevan et al., 2019). Our Collabra: Psychology 20 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... presented in the work by Ashton-James and Tracy (2012) areas related to status, power, leadership, and hierarchy. and Ho et al. (2016). However, some of our studies did over- Yet, more work on validating experimental manipulation of come the limitations of these previous studies. Our Study 1 state-level hubristic pride should take priority. The single- showed consistent patterns with regard to hubristic manip- facet (parsimonious) model of pride still stands as a fruitful ulation as did previous studies. Our Study 2 was also con- model, until pending evidence otherwise supports the two- ducted online and yielded the expected effect with regard facet theory of pride. to a manipulation of authentic pride relative to a control group. Hence, it is extremely unlikely that the online for- mat itself is to blame. Competing Interests Due to limited sample sizes, some of our studies may suffer from low power of detecting a true effect of experi- The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest mental manipulations, assuming those true effects are very with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this ar- small. We mitigated this limitation partially by conducting ticle. a series of mini meta-analyses. However, we suspect that a greater sample size would not eliminate the fundamental Author Contributions difficulty of observing a strong sense of hubristic pride. We believe that our studies as a whole provide sufficient infor- Contributed to conception and design: KK, MK mation to suggest constructive criticisms and future direc- Contributed to acquisition of data: KK, MK tion. Reporting the null results, albeit with limited sample Contributed to analysis and interpretation of data: KK, sizes, would help future research create a more innovative MK manipulation. Drafted and/or revised the article: KK, MK As with much of previous research on pride, our sample Approved the submitted version for publication: KK, MK consisted of highly homogenous college students. Though we think it is necessary to establish valid manipulations Acknowledgment with any samples first, future research may investigate more diverse pride experience of other populations. We would like to thank Hirotaka Imada for his comment on the earlier version of the manuscript. Conclusion Data Accessibility Statement Our work contributes to the ongoing controversy about the two-facet theory of pride, but much remains to be in- Materials, data, and code are publicly available on: vestigated. More research is necessary to defend the valid- https://osf.io/ ity of two-facet theory of pride over a single-facet model 9rfby/?view_only=54dde4c60f694cbeaa90c0788410c1d2 of pride. Future research needs to clarify the nature of hubristic pride and accordingly develop a stronger manip- Submitted: October 18, 2021 PDT, Accepted: September 21, ulation of hubristic pride without confounding it with au- 2022 PDT thentic pride and social desirability. A successful manipula- tion of authentic/hubristic pride will inspire many research This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CCBY-4.0). View this license’s legal deed at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 and legal code at http://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode for more information. Collabra: Psychology 21 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... References Anderson, C., Brion, S., Moore, D. A., & Kennedy, J. A. Fayant, M. P., Sigall, H., Lemonnier, A., Retsin, E., & (2012). A status-enhancement account of Alexopoulos, T. (2017). On the limitations of overconfidence. Journal of Personality and Social manipulation checks: An obstacle toward cumulative Psychology, 103(4), 718–735. https://doi.org/10.1037/ science. International Review of Social Psychology, a0029395 30(1), 125–130. https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.102 Ashton-James, C. E., & Tracy, J. L. (2012). Pride and Fiedler, K., McCaughey, L., & Prager, J. (2021). Quo prejudice: How feelings about the self influence vadis, methodology? The key role of manipulation judgments of others. Personality and Social Psychology checks for validity control and quality of science. Bulletin, 38(4), 466–476. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146 Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(4), 816–826. 167211429449 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620970602 Cheng, J. T., Tracy, J. L., Foulsham, T., Kingstone, A., & Gentile, B., Miller, J. D., Hoffman, B. J., Reidy, D. E., Henrich, J. (2013). Two ways to the top: Evidence that Zeichner, A., & Campbell, W. K. (2013). A test of two dominance and prestige are distinct yet viable brief measures of grandiose narcissism: The avenues to social rank and influence. Journal of narcissistic personality inventory–13 and the Personality and Social Psychology, 104(1), 103–125. htt narcissistic personality inventory-16. Psychological ps://doi.org/10.1037/a0030398 Assessment, 25(4), 1120–1136. https://doi.org/10.103 7/a0033192 Chester, D. S., & Lasko, E. N. (2021). Construct validation of experimental manipulations in social Goh, J. X., Hall, J. A., & Rosenthal, R. (2016). Mini psychology: Current practices and recommendations meta-analysis of your own studies: Some arguments for the future. Perspectives on Psychological Science, on why and a primer on how. Social and Personality 16(2), 377–395. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916209 Psychology Compass, 10(10), 535–549. https://doi.org/ 50684 10.1111/spc3.12267 De Cremer, D., & Van Dijk, E. (2008). Leader—follower Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B., Jr. effects in resource dilemmas: The roles of leadership (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five selection and social responsibility. Group Processes & personality domains. Journal of Research in Intergroup Relations, 11(3), 355–369. https://doi.org/1 Personality, 37(6), 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/s 0.1177/1368430208090647 0092-6566(03)00046-1 Dickens, L. R., & Robins, R. W. (2020). Pride: A meta- Hardy, C. L., & Van Vugt, M. (2006). Nice guys finish analytic project. Emotion, 22(5), 1071–1087. https://d first: The competitive altruism hypothesis. oi.org/10.1037/emo0000905 Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 32(10), 1402–1413. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672062910 Dorfman, A., Eyal, T., & Bereby-Meyer, Y. (2014). Proud to cooperate: The consideration of pride promotes cooperation in a social dilemma. Journal of Hauser, D. J., Ellsworth, P. C., & Gonzalez, R. (2018). Experimental Social Psychology, 55, 105–109. https://d Are manipulation checks necessary? Frontiers in oi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.06.003 Psychology, 9, 998. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.201 8.00998 Ebner, N. C., Riediger, M., & Lindenberger, U. (2010). FACES—A database of facial expressions in young, Henrich, J., & Gil-White, F. J. (2001). The evolution of middle-aged, and older women and men: prestige: Freely conferred deference as a mechanism Development and validation. Behavior Research for enhancing the benefits of cultural transmission. Methods, 42(1), 351–362. https://doi.org/10.3758/br Evolution and Human Behavior, 22(3), 165–196. http m.42.1.351 s://doi.org/10.1016/s1090-5138(00)00071-4 Ejelöv, E., & Luke, T. J. (2020). “Rarely safe to assume”: Ho, S.-Y., Tong, E. M., & Jia, L. (2016). Authentic and Evaluating the use and interpretation of hubristic pride: Differential effects on delay of manipulation checks in experimental social gratification. Emotion, 16(8), 1147–1156. https://doi.o psychology. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, rg/10.1037/emo0000179 87, 103937. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.10393 Holbrook, C., Piazza, J., & Fessler, D. M. (2014). Conceptual and empirical challenges to the Ekman, P., Levenson, R. W., & Friesen, W. V. (1983). “authentic” versus “hubristic” model of pride. Autonomic nervous system activity distinguishes Emotion, 14(1), 17–32. https://doi.org/10.1037/a00317 among emotions. Science, 221(4616), 1208–1210. http 11 s://doi.org/10.1126/science.6612338 Larsen, R. J., & Sinnett, L. M. (1991). Meta-analysis of Fast, N. J., & Chen, S. (2009). When the boss feels experimental manipulations: Some factors affecting inadequate: Power, incompetence, and aggression. the Velten mood induction procedure. Personality and Psychological Science, 20(11), 1406–1413. https://doi.o Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(3), 323–334. https://do rg/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02452.x i.org/10.1177/0146167291173013 Lewis, M. (2000). Self-conscious emotions: Embarrassment, pride, shame, and guilt. In M. Lewis & J. M. Haviland-Jones (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 623–636). Guilford. Collabra: Psychology 22 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Ma, D. S., Correll, J., & Wittenbrink, B. (2015). The Tracy, J. L., Mercadante, E., Witkower, Z., & Cheng, J. T. Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces (2020). The evolution of pride and social hierarchy. and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-053 51–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2020.04.002 2-5 Tracy, J. L., & Prehn, C. (2012). Arrogant or self- Mahadevan, N., Gregg, A. P., & Sedikides, C. (2019). Is confident? The use of contextual knowledge to self-regard a sociometer or a hierometer? Self-esteem differentiate hubristic and authentic pride from a tracks status and inclusion, narcissism tracks status. single nonverbal expression. Cognition & Emotion, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(3), 26(1), 14–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.201 444–466. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000189 1.561298 Mercadante, E., Witkower, Z., & Tracy, J. L. (2021). The Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2004). Putting the Self Into psychological structure, social consequences, Self-Conscious Emotions: A Theoretical Model. function, and expression of pride experiences. Psychological Inquiry, 15(2), 103–125. https://doi.org/ Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 39, 130–135. h 10.1207/s15327965pli1502_01 ttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2021.03.010 Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2007). The psychological Rammstedt, B., & John, O. P. (2007). Measuring structure of pride: A tale of two facets. Journal of personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short Personality and Social Psychology, 92(3), 506–525. http version of the Big Five Inventory in English and s://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.3.506 German. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(1), Tracy, J. L., & Robins, R. W. (2008). The nonverbal 203–212. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2006.02.001 expression of pride: Evidence for cross-cultural Rosseel, Y. (2012). Lavaan: An R package for structural recognition. Journal of Personality and Social equation modeling. Journal of Statistical Software, Psychology, 94(3), 516–530. https://doi.org/10.1037/0 48(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v048.i02 022-3514.94.3.516 Sanders, S., Wisse, B., Van Yperen, N. W., & Rus, D. Tracy, J. L., Robins, R. W., & Lagattuta, K. H. (2005). (2018). On ethically solvent leaders: The roles of Can children recognize pride? Emotion, 5(3), 251–257. pride and moral identity in predicting leader ethical https://doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.5.3.251 behavior. Journal of Business Ethics, 150(3), 631–645. Tracy, J. L., Shariff, A. F., & Cheng, J. T. (2010). A https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3180-0 naturalist’s view of pride. Emotion Review, 2(2), Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the content and 163–177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073909354627 structure of values: Theoretical advances and Van Vugt, M., & Ahuja, A. (2011). Naturally selected: The empirical tests in 20 countries. Advances in evolutionary science of leadership. HarperCollins. Experimental Social Psychology, 25, 1–65. https://doi.o Watson, D., & Clark, L. A. (1999). The PANAS-X: Manual rg/10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60281-6 for the positive and negative affect schedule-expanded Shi, Y., Chung, J. M., Cheng, J. T., Tracy, J. L., Robins, R. form. The University of Iowa. W., Chen, X., & Zheng, Y. (2015). Cross-cultural Williams, L. A., & DeSteno, D. (2008). Pride and evidence for the two-facet structure of pride. Journal perseverance: The motivational role of pride. Journal of Research in Personality, 55, 61–74. https://doi.org/1 of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(6), 1007–1017. 0.1016/j.jrp.2015.01.004 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.94.6.1007 Tangney, J. P., Miller, R. S., Flicker, L., & Barlow, D. H. Williams, L. A., & DeSteno, D. (2010). Pride in (1996). Are shame, guilt, and embarrassment distinct parsimony. Emotion Review, 2(2), 180–181. https://do emotions? Journal of Personality and Social i.org/10.1177/1754073909355015 Psychology, 70(6), 1256–1269. https://doi.org/10.103 Witkower, Z., Mercadante, E., & Tracy, J. L. (2021). The 7/0022-3514.70.6.1256 chicken and egg of pride and social rank. Social Tracy, J. L., Cheng, J. T., Robins, R. W., & Trzesniewski, Psychological and Personality Science, K. H. (2009). Authentic and hubristic pride: The affective core of self-esteem and narcissism. Self and Wubben, M. J., De Cremer, D., & van Dijk, E. (2012). Is Identity, 8(2–3), 196–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/152 pride a prosocial emotion? Interpersonal effects of authentic and hubristic pride. Cognition & Emotion, 26(6), 1084–1097. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2 011.646956 Collabra: Psychology 23 The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across... Supplementary Materials Peer Review History Download: https://collabra.scholasticahq.com/article/38634-the-quest-for-eliciting-hubristic-pride-nomological- shockwaves-networks-attributions-and-social-desirability-across-different-experimental-manipu/attachment/ 101195.docx?auth_token=p13_17r2Bgx1G01R-LGM Appendix Download: https://collabra.scholasticahq.com/article/38634-the-quest-for-eliciting-hubristic-pride-nomological- shockwaves-networks-attributions-and-social-desirability-across-different-experimental-manipu/attachment/ 101196.docx?auth_token=p13_17r2Bgx1G01R-LGM Collabra: Psychology
Journal
Collabra Psychology – University of California Press
Published: Oct 11, 2022
Keywords: emotion; affect; pride; attribution; replication; reproducibility; open science; construct validity