0:06

Welcome to the science of success with

0:08

your host,

0:09

Matt Bodnar. Welcome

0:12

to the science of success. I'm your host, Matt

0:15

Bodnar. I'm an entrepreneur and investor in

0:17

Nashville, Tennessee, and I'm obsessed with

0:19

the mindset of success and the psychology

0:21

of performance. I've read hundreds of books, conducted

0:24

countless hours of research and study,

0:26

and I'm going to take you on a journey into the human

0:28

mind and what makes peak performers

0:30

tick with a focus on always having our discussions

0:33

rooted in psychological research and scientific

0:35

fact, not opinion. In this episode,

0:38

we discuss pride, why it may not

0:40

be the deadly sin it's often cracked up to be. We

0:43

dig into how research defines pride,

0:45

examine the critical distinction between self-esteem

0:47

and narcissism, the deep importance of being

0:50

able to accept criticism, and look at

0:52

the difference between strategies of dominance

0:54

and strategies of prestige with Dr.

0:56

Jessica Tracy. The science of success

0:58

continues to grow with more than 725,000 downloads, listeners in over a hundred

1:00

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do you organize and remember all this incredible information?

1:11

A lot of our listeners are curious about how

1:13

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experts, listening to awesome podcasts and

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more. Because of that, we've created an epic

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1:25

called how to organize and remember everything.

1:27

And you can get it completely for free by texting

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put in your email.

1:50

In our previous episode, we discussed what Elon

1:52

Musk, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and

1:54

others consider to be the single greatest threat to

1:57

humanity. Why death is not a binary event

1:59

that makes you transition.

1:59

from being alive or dead at a specific moment

2:02

in time. We ask if you would spend $1,000 on

2:04

a chance to live forever. We look at the biology

2:07

behind cryogenics, vitrification, and putting

2:09

your body on biological pause and we explore

2:11

why poverty, climate change, war, and all

2:13

of our problems melt away in the face of one

2:16

extremely important issue with our guest

2:18

Tim Urban from Wait But Why. If

2:20

you love exploring relevant, highly fascinating

2:23

scientific topics, listen to that episode.

2:25

Today we have another fascinating guest on the show,

2:28

Dr. Jessica Tracy. Jessica

2:30

is a professor of psychology at the University

2:33

of British Columbia where she also directs the

2:35

Emotion and Self Lab. She's the author

2:37

of Take Pride, Why the Deadliest Sin

2:39

Holds the Secret to Human Success. She's

2:41

published over 80 journal articles, book chapters,

2:44

edited volumes and reviews and her groundbreaking

2:46

work on pride has been covered in hundreds of media outlets

2:49

including Good Morning America, NPR,

2:51

New York Times, The Economist, and The Scientific American.

2:54

Jeff, welcome to the Science of Success. Thank

2:56

you so much. Thanks for having me. Well, we're very

2:58

excited to have you on here. So for listeners

3:00

who might not be familiar with you and

3:02

some of your work, tell us a little bit about yourself. Sure.

3:05

So I'm a researcher and a psychology

3:07

researcher at the University of British Columbia. I

3:10

teach psychology, but mainly what I do is

3:12

do research and most of my research is on emotions.

3:14

And the emotions that I kind of specialize

3:16

in are the emotions that we call self-conscious

3:19

emotions.

3:19

These are emotions that are all about how we feel

3:21

about ourselves. And they typically include

3:24

shame, guilt, and pride. And pride is the

3:26

one that I've really done the most

3:27

research on. Very exciting.

3:29

So tell me a little bit sort of what

3:31

is pride? And I know a lot of people have misconceptions

3:35

or maybe don't really understand it, obviously

3:37

not to the degree that you do, but when people think

3:39

of pride, they might not necessarily think of

3:42

kind of what you talk about. So how do you define pride?

3:44

Yeah. So pride is,

3:46

you know, in its simplest terms, it's the

3:48

emotion that we feel when we feel good

3:50

about ourselves. And that can mean we feel good about

3:52

ourselves for having to accomplish something really big

3:55

and really important or even something small, but

3:57

that we worked hard for. Or it could be that

3:59

we feel good about ourselves. because we just kind of are reflecting

4:01

back and feel like hey, you know, I'm pretty

4:03

awesome. I'm really great. And those are two

4:06

slightly different feelings and we can talk about that,

4:08

that pride is not one kind of simple

4:10

thing. It's two different things, but in its most straightforward

4:13

sense, it's basically these positive feelings

4:15

about oneself.

4:17

When many people think of pride, you know, that

4:19

it's a deadly sin, pride cometh before a fall,

4:22

all that kind of stuff. Is pride something

4:24

that's negative?

4:26

Yeah, well, so this is kind of a big issue that I was sort

4:28

of implying that pride can be

4:30

negative, but it's also positive. And so

4:32

what we found is that there actually are two

4:35

different kinds of pride experiences. This is

4:37

a really big, important finding because I

4:39

think the failure to distinguish between

4:41

these two prides has led to all kinds of confusion

4:43

in many different ways. So on the one hand, we have

4:45

the kind of pride that it's all about feelings of

4:47

self-confidence and self-worth. And it's, you know,

4:49

typically felt in response to a hard-earned

4:52

accomplishment, you know, when you really work for something that's

4:54

important to you and you achieve it, and then you feel good

4:56

about yourself as a result. And we call that authentic

4:58

pride. And that's because it's based

5:00

on an authentic sense of self.

5:02

You're sort of reflecting on who you are in the hard work

5:04

you put

5:04

in a realistic manner. And that kind

5:06

of pride is linked to all kinds of good outcomes.

5:09

So when you feel that kind of pride, it typically makes you

5:11

want to keep on working hard. People who tend

5:13

to feel it tend to be good people.

5:16

They care about others. They care about their society.

5:18

They want to help others. And they're high in sort

5:20

of achievement motivation. But there is this

5:22

other kind of pride as well. And that's the kind of

5:24

pride that we feel when it's not just that we

5:26

feel good about ourselves, but that we feel like

5:29

we're really great and even better than

5:31

everyone else. Right? This is the kind of pride that's linked

5:33

to arrogance, egotism, conceitedness.

5:36

And we call this kind of pride hubristic pride. The word

5:38

hubris, of course, comes from the Greeks who talked

5:40

about hubris. In pretty much these terms, people

5:43

who had hubris, and according to the Greeks, were people

5:45

who basically believed they were kind of like gods

5:47

more than humans. And that's a little bit what

5:49

hubrisic pride is. It really is just almost godlike

5:52

feeling, very self-aggrandizing. And that kind

5:54

of pride we found is linked to a lot of kind

5:56

of problematic outcomes. People who tend to

5:58

feel it tend to be aggressive. They sort of are

6:00

manipulative of others. They take advantage of

6:02

others in order to accomplish their own ends, or

6:04

they're sort of selfish. And as a result, they have

6:06

a number of psychological problems, so they

6:08

tend to succumb to depression and anxiety.

6:11

They have trouble making close friends. They're disliked

6:13

by others around them. Those really kind of big

6:15

distinctions, these really are two different experiences

6:18

in many ways. And yet in English, we refer

6:20

to them with that same word, pride.

6:22

So tell me a little bit more about the

6:24

distinction kind of between authentic

6:27

pride and hubristic pride, and why

6:29

haven't people kind of grasped that

6:31

distinction before?

6:32

One reason that I think people haven't grasped

6:35

it, I guess I would say, is because both prides

6:37

do involve positive feelings about the self. It's

6:40

not that one is pride and one's anger. They're not

6:42

two totally different emotions. They are both this

6:44

good feeling about the self. And I think it's pretty

6:46

easy to say, well, one's just an extreme version,

6:49

right? And you feel a little bit of pride. That's

6:51

authentic pride. You feel a lot of pride. That's hubristic pride.

6:53

That's really not what it is. I think that's an easy

6:56

mistake to make. But there really is actually

6:58

more of a qualitative, not just a quantitative difference

7:00

between these two kinds of pride. And one way to understand

7:02

it from sort of a psychological perspective is

7:05

to think about the difference

7:05

between self-esteem

7:06

and narcissism. So psychologists talk

7:09

about self-esteem as this really great thing,

7:11

right? We want our kids to have high self-esteem.

7:13

And lots of studies have looked at high self-esteem

7:15

and shown that basically it's related to pretty much everything

7:18

good that psychologists study. If there's a good personality

7:20

trait or good behavior or good social behavior, it's

7:23

linked to high self-esteem. But narcissism,

7:25

which is another topic psychologists have studied for quite

7:27

a while,

7:27

is linked to all kinds of bad behaviors.

7:30

Narcissists tend to be aggressive. And they take

7:32

advantage of others. They do all the things that I was saying

7:34

before, characterize people who feel a lot of hubristic

7:36

pride. And that's because narcissism, unlike

7:39

self-esteem, isn't a genuine

7:42

good feeling about the self. It's not based on a realistic

7:44

self-praisal. It's based on a more exaggerated

7:47

sense of self. And that's exactly what hubristic pride.

7:49

Hubristic pride is the emotion that fuels narcissism.

7:52

And it occurs not when we're kind of looking

7:54

realistically at ourselves and what we've done

7:57

and our accomplishments,

7:57

but rather when we're sort of taking

7:59

the... a biased view of ourselves, this sort

8:02

of inflated view of ourselves where we really are motivated

8:04

to see ourselves in the best possible

8:06

light. And one thing I argue in

8:08

my book is that the reason for this motivation is

8:11

because deep down people

8:13

who are feeling hubristic pride really

8:15

aren't feeling good about themselves at all. So you've got this

8:17

kind of almost ironic process

8:19

that happens where when people, some

8:21

people feel bad about themselves, feel ashamed,

8:24

those feelings are so painful to experience

8:26

rather than consciously accept them, they sort

8:28

of bury them, they repress them, they pretend they're not

8:30

there, they try to avoid them. And one way of

8:32

doing that, one way to help do that is to

8:34

instead experience the opposite,

8:37

right? So you know, you feel threatened in some way,

8:39

someone maybe it criticizes you and instead of thinking,

8:41

Oh, God, I feel horrible about myself, you bury

8:43

that and then you say, you know what, he's an idiot.

8:46

I'm the one who's great. I know everything. I'm better

8:48

than everyone else.

8:49

I'm going to show him. And that's what people

8:51

who are narcissistic tend to do. And that

8:53

seems to

8:54

be a behavior associated with hubristic pride.

8:56

So deep down, many people

8:58

who exhibit kind of narcissistic behavior

9:01

or the as you call it hubristic pride,

9:03

they don't feel good about themselves. And in many

9:05

ways, it's sort of a manifestation of a lack

9:08

of self confidence and self esteem.

9:11

Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, now this is

9:13

a fairly controversial idea. Some people who study narcissism

9:15

say that's not the case, narcissists just think

9:17

they're really great. And the reason that they get aggressive

9:20

when other people challenge them is because it kind

9:22

of annoys them to have other people challenge them

9:24

when they know that they're really great. My view is that

9:26

doesn't make a whole lot of sense, you know, can sort of

9:28

think about it logically, if you think you're great, and

9:31

you have total confidence in that you're not sort

9:33

of underneath it all questioning that or feeling

9:35

insecure about it. Someone comes along

9:37

and challenges you in some way. And typically in research

9:40

studies, the way this is done is you're asked

9:42

to write a short essay about a topic

9:44

that you may or may not have strong feelings about spend

9:46

five minutes or so on it. And you're just doing it for

9:48

some course credits. It's really not something you

9:50

know, you're deeply invested in any way,

9:53

you then submit the essay to who you

9:55

think is another student, you get it back, and

9:57

you find that the essay has been sort of torn apart this

9:59

other student.

9:59

He's written red marks all over it telling you how

10:02

terrible

10:02

they think it is. And so you can imagine yourself

10:04

in this situation. And again, if you're someone who has

10:06

a real genuine sense of confidence in yourself, you

10:09

probably would respond to those criticisms

10:11

by thinking, well, you know, I spent five minutes on

10:13

that essay. It's really not something I care about. This

10:15

is no big deal. Or maybe you think, you know, I

10:17

think my essay was pretty good. This guy, he doesn't know what he's doing.

10:19

That's fine. You know, he could say what he thinks.

10:22

And I'll continue with my opinion. But what the

10:24

narcissist does is instead say,

10:26

that guy, I hate him, you know, and he lashes

10:29

out at that guy. And so studies show that narcissists

10:31

will go to great lengths to punish the person who just

10:33

gave them this negative feedback. They'll blast

10:35

them with loud noise. They'll

10:36

sort of dose them with really spicy hot sauce,

10:39

whatever opportunity researchers essentially give them

10:41

to punish these people, they'll take it. And

10:43

so, you know, my view is that we

10:45

really can only explain that kind of extreme aggressive

10:48

behavior in this situation by suggesting

10:51

that, well, underneath those feelings of confidence

10:53

is really the opposite. It's something else that the person

10:56

is really desperately defending against.

10:58

That's fascinating. You know, one of the things we've

11:00

talked a lot about on the show is kind of

11:03

the idea of accepting criticism

11:05

and being really open about

11:08

feedback and kind of understanding your own limitations.

11:11

It seems like something that people who struggle

11:13

with heuristic pride really can't do

11:15

is accept criticism.

11:17

Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. That's a huge

11:19

limitation. And I think it's one of the big findings narcissism

11:21

in general. And it seems to be the case for a heuristic pride

11:24

that criticism is a real weak point that

11:26

it's sort of not acceptable to be attacked.

11:28

These people can't handle it. And so I think

11:30

that's actually one reason to think about the distinction

11:33

between authentic and heuristic pride, because if

11:35

you can focus on authentic pride, on sort of your

11:37

genuine accomplishments, the things you

11:39

work hard for and have a realistic

11:41

sense of self-confidence,

11:41

one based on what you actually

11:44

did rather than this artificial self-aggrandized

11:46

perception that's all about defending these

11:49

unconscious feelings of insecurity, then you

11:51

can accept criticism. You know, then you can hear this negative

11:53

feedback and say, you know what, they're right, I

11:55

could do better or they're wrong. I think

11:57

I did a really good job and I disagree with this person.

11:59

take it either way and not get upset

12:02

about it, not get too upset about it. And I think that's

12:04

a really obviously important thing to do for people

12:06

in almost any work domain.

12:08

I'd love to hear a little bit about some of your

12:10

research background and maybe starting with

12:13

looking at pride displays and some of

12:15

the research you've done around Olympic athletes

12:17

and going to Burkina Faso and all

12:20

of those different stories.

12:21

Sure. Yeah. So when I started my

12:23

research on pride, it was about 2003. And at the time,

12:27

it's really, it's fair to say pretty much no one

12:29

had studied pride. There were sort of hints of it

12:31

here and there. Some developmental psychologists,

12:33

people who studied children had kind of looked at pride

12:35

on kids, but there really wasn't a lot in adults. And

12:38

there's kind of a whole bunch of historical reasons for that.

12:40

But one of the big factors is that emotion

12:43

research really took off in the 1970s

12:45

and 80s when Paul Ekman famously

12:47

traveled around the world and found that people everywhere

12:50

recognize and show a facial expression

12:53

of emotions in the same way. And this is a really kind

12:55

of groundbreaking finding. He very famously

12:57

went to Papua New Guinea and studied people who

12:59

were members of this small tribe who'd never

13:01

seen a Westerner before in their lives. And he showed

13:03

them emotion expressions from the West and they

13:06

identified them in the same way that Westerners did.

13:08

And so this is a big deal because it suggests that emotions

13:10

are universal, right? If people all over the world identify

13:13

emotion expressions in the same way, that

13:15

has to mean that expressions aren't something

13:17

that each culture creates individually, you

13:19

know, in its own way. Instead, it has to mean

13:22

that emotions are part of our human nature. They're

13:24

something that we evolved to experience and display.

13:26

And that was a really kind of groundbreaking finding

13:28

at that time. Now, that was really

13:31

great. But the downside of it was that Ekman

13:33

studied and found evidence for universality

13:36

for only a very small set of six

13:38

emotions. And these six emotions, you know, you

13:40

probably can maybe guess what they are, anger,

13:42

fear, sadness, disgust, happiness,

13:45

and surprise.

13:46

They do seem to be universal. They have these

13:48

universal facial expressions and they're important

13:50

in many ways and serve all kinds of adaptive

13:52

functions for humans. But that doesn't

13:54

mean that there aren't other emotions out there as well

13:57

that might also be adaptive and important.

13:59

And yet what people took from Ekman's research

14:02

is that actually, no, only these six emotions,

14:04

only these six that had these universal facial expressions,

14:07

those are really the only kind of important emotions

14:09

worthy of study and fundamental to the human

14:11

species. So when I sort of got interested in pride

14:14

in the early 2000s, you know, there really hadn't been much

14:16

done in it, partly for this reason, but

14:18

it occurred to me that, well, you know, perhaps

14:20

pride does have a universal

14:23

nonverbal display. And the thing about Ekman's

14:25

research was that it was really restricted to the

14:27

face. He was very focused on finding the emotions

14:30

that people show in their faces. And pride,

14:32

you can't show it just from the face. If you look at

14:34

what a facial expression of pride looks like, you won't

14:36

be able to tell it from happiness. It looks essentially

14:39

the same.

14:39

However,

14:40

when people feel pride, they do

14:42

do something distinctive with their nonverbal behaviors.

14:45

It's just that what they

14:46

do involves their body as well as the face.

14:48

And so you can think about this, right? People who feel

14:50

pride, yes, they smile, but they also

14:52

tilt their heads upwards

14:53

a little bit. They push

14:55

out their chest. They pull back their shoulders. They basically

14:58

make

14:58

themselves expansive in various ways. Sometimes

15:00

they raise their arms above their head and put their hands in

15:02

fists. It's just really expansive, very

15:04

visually apparent display. And so we

15:06

thought, well, you know, if we can show that that display

15:09

is also recognized as pride

15:12

or recognized reliably by people all over the

15:14

world, then that might mean that pride,

15:16

much like these others' emotions, is a

15:18

fundamental part of human nature. And so to do

15:20

that, we basically began by

15:22

having people pose expressions that we thought

15:24

mapped on to what we expected pride

15:26

to look like. And we tested whether other people

15:28

recognized them. And we started just, you know, in California

15:30

where I was in grad school, and then we took it to

15:33

Europe and then eventually to Burkina Faso,

15:35

as you mentioned, we traveled to this country in

15:37

West Africa. We were able to do studies

15:40

with the help of a collaborator there with people

15:42

who very much had almost no

15:44

exposure to really any culture

15:46

outside their own, certainly to anyone in the West. These

15:49

were people living in what anthropologists

15:50

call a small scale traditional society,

15:52

basically living off the land in much the same way

15:54

as their ancestors had for really for millennia.

15:57

They lived in mud huts with no plumbing or

15:59

electricity.

15:59

the rural countryside of this country that's incredibly

16:02

poor. Burkina Faso is typically ranked

16:04

as the second or third poorest country in

16:06

the world as a result

16:07

of which they have really no access

16:10

to anything outside of their own country, right?

16:12

There's no there's no media at the time.

16:14

There was no internet in these world.

16:16

And now a quick word from this episode

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18:19

dot M-E slash success

18:23

for a free 45 day

18:26

extended trial. Again, that's

18:28

Canva.me slash success.

18:31

Go check it out. And now back

18:33

to the episode.

18:35

World villages, sometimes in the cities you could find

18:37

it, but certainly not where we were doing our research,

18:39

no magazines. So really no way for

18:41

these people to have somehow seen

18:44

a Western pride expression, right? It's hard

18:46

to tell a story about how that could have happened. So when

18:48

we show them pride expressions posed by

18:50

people from the US, we found that

18:52

they recognize them and they recognize them

18:54

and they were able to say, yeah, that's pride. And so that's really

18:57

good evidence that this expression isn't

18:59

something that's

19:00

unique to American culture, but

19:02

rather

19:03

something that's universal, that is part of

19:05

our nature. Because again, it's hard to explain

19:07

how these people on the other side of the world would recognize

19:10

this expression in the same way if it

19:12

were not for the fact that

19:14

humans as a species recognize the

19:16

emotion this way because we evolved to do that. We evolved

19:18

to recognize the pride expression.

19:20

You also studied blind Olympians,

19:22

right? And they demonstrated the same expression.

19:26

Yeah. Yeah. So the Burkina Faso study was

19:28

nice because we looked at recognition, but you know, recognition

19:30

is just kind of one side of demonstrating a

19:33

universal expression. You also want to know that people actually

19:35

show this expression when they're feeling pride. And

19:37

so to do that, we looked at Olympians. These were judo

19:39

athletes in the 2004 Olympic Games. And

19:41

we just looked, we coded their behaviors

19:44

after every match in that Olympics. And we

19:46

did that, we actually were fortunate to have photos taken

19:48

by an official judo federation photographer.

19:51

They were really high quality photos, very

19:53

up close to these people. This guy was right on the mat

19:55

with them.

19:56

And they were moment by moment shots of every

19:58

behavior these people engaged in.

19:59

while experiencing what's probably the most intense

20:02

pride of their lives if they won their match. And

20:04

we simply tested whether the behaviors

20:06

these people showed in fact mapped on to

20:08

this recognizable pride expression that

20:10

we found to be recognized

20:11

by people all over the world. Sure enough it did. And

20:14

we found no differences by culture. So we looked

20:16

at athletes from countries all over the world.

20:18

And basically no matter what country they were from, they

20:20

tended to respond to the success experience by

20:22

displaying pride. Then we looked at blind athletes.

20:25

So we looked at the Paralympics where you have people

20:27

who are blind, including people

20:29

who are congenitally blind, meaning they were born blind.

20:32

So they've never been able to see. And

20:34

the reason that's really

20:34

important is because here we have a group of people

20:36

who literally could not have learned

20:39

to display pride from watching others,

20:41

right? They've literally never seen a pride expression. And

20:43

so well, you know, the athletes from countries all over the world

20:45

probably have seen other people show pride, right?

20:47

They're professional athletes participating at the Olympic

20:49

level. They're obviously exposed to lots of cultures.

20:52

For these blind athletes, that's just not the case.

20:54

And when we looked at how these people responded to

20:56

success, we saw exactly the same thing. Just

20:59

like athletes from countries all over the world who had

21:01

sight, the congenitally blind athletes

21:02

also responded to winning an Olympic

21:04

match by displaying these pride behaviors.

21:07

So humans display pride in a similar

21:09

way across many different cultures. Does

21:11

that vary for displays of

21:14

authentic pride versus hubristic pride?

21:16

It's a great question. And it's something that we

21:18

really kind of tried to look into in a number

21:21

of different ways. The short story

21:23

is no. Both authentic and hubristic pride

21:25

are associated with the same nonverbal expression.

21:27

So the expansive posture, the little bit of a

21:29

smile, the arms extended out from

21:31

the body. People will see that and

21:33

will sometimes call it authentic pride and sometimes call

21:36

it hubristic pride and really can't reliably

21:38

distinguish between the two. Now, if we give them

21:40

a little bit extra information, so if we tell them

21:43

something about the person showing pride, like for

21:45

example, this guy is known to be kind of arrogant,

21:47

right? He thinks he's really great. Then they'll say, okay,

21:49

that's hubristic pride, right? So with context, they

21:51

can make this distinction. But without it, we

21:54

fail to find any clear sort

21:56

of pattern there, which I think is surprising in many

21:58

ways. And I don't want to say the stories over. there, I think

22:00

future studies might find a distinction, but

22:03

that seems to be what we found so far.

22:05

So we talked about some of the downsides

22:07

of narcissism and hubristic pride. What

22:09

are some of the benefits of authentic

22:11

pride?

22:12

Well, authentic pride is in

22:14

large part what motivates us to want

22:16

to succeed. So basically authentic pride is

22:18

what we feel when we've worked hard for

22:20

a particular success and it is

22:23

essentially our mind's signal for

22:25

telling us that we are doing

22:28

the right thing. That is to say we're doing what we

22:30

need to do to become the kind of person we want to be,

22:32

which really means the kind of person our society

22:34

wants us to be because we all evolved to want

22:36

to have this sense of self that we feel good about because

22:39

doing so makes sure that you know we

22:41

essentially stay included

22:42

within our societies, that people don't reject

22:44

us, and eventually that we gain status in our societies.

22:47

And authentic pride is essentially the emotional

22:49

signal that tells us we're on track toward doing

22:51

that. And so what that means is authentic pride

22:53

is incredibly rewarding. It's one of the most

22:56

pleasurable emotion experiences. We all really want

22:58

to feel it because it's not just that we're happy, it's

23:00

that we feel good about ourselves, right? And

23:02

we desperately want to feel good about ourselves. That's just

23:04

how we evolved to be. And so as a result

23:07

of that, we are very much motivated to

23:09

want to attain authentic pride. And that

23:11

desire is what pushes

23:12

us to achieve in all kinds of ways.

23:15

We had one interesting study I think that showed

23:17

this where we looked at undergraduate

23:18

students' responses to their

23:20

performance on an exam. And this is a real

23:22

exam they took in their class and we took a look

23:24

at how well they did and then we asked them to tell us how much pride

23:26

they felt in response. And then we asked them

23:29

a few weeks later, okay, are you going to study the same or differently

23:31

for your next exam? And then we looked at how well they did

23:33

on that next exam. And it was interesting because we thought,

23:35

okay, the people who did well on that first exam, they're

23:38

going to tell us they felt a lot of authentic

23:40

pride as a result. And then those pride feelings

23:42

are going to motivate them to work even harder for the

23:44

next exam and they're going to be even better. And

23:46

that wasn't actually what we found. So the people

23:48

who did well, they did feel authentic pride, that was

23:51

as we expected, but they didn't change their

23:53

work habits for the next exam. In fact, what they said

23:55

is, you know, I worked hard for the

23:57

last exam, I did well, I feel good, I'm going

23:59

to work this same way. So it's sort of like these are

24:01

already people who are performing a really high level, they don't

24:03

actually need to change their behavior. And it's probably more adaptive

24:06

that they don't change their behavior. And in fact, when they don't,

24:08

they still end up doing quite well on the

24:10

next exam. What was really neat though,

24:12

was that the people who didn't do so

24:14

well on that first exam, the students who sort of underperformed,

24:18

many of those students told us they felt a lack

24:20

of authentic pride in their performance, they essentially

24:23

did not feel authentic pride in their performance. And

24:26

that lack of authentic pride, that is the absence

24:28

of those feelings those people told

24:29

us about that led them to tell us a few weeks

24:32

later, I am going to change my behaviors, I'm

24:34

going to study differently for the next exam. And those

24:36

change behaviors, in turn,

24:38

led to an improved performance on the

24:40

subsequent exam, we were able to trace that improvement

24:42

in their performance directly back to those missing

24:45

feelings of authentic pride. So it's a bit of a complicated

24:47

story. But the short version is when people

24:50

won't do well, and people are missing that

24:52

feeling of success, and are able to

24:54

recognize, hey, you know, I'm not feeling that

24:56

sense of confidence and self worth that I want

24:58

to, that absence can actually directly

25:01

motivate a change of behavior, which leads to

25:03

a different difference.

25:04

So the drive for authentic

25:07

pride is what creates that motivation.

25:10

That's exactly right. Yeah. Earlier,

25:12

you kind of briefly touched on the

25:14

concept of emotions being adaptive.

25:16

And for somebody who is listening and doesn't kind

25:18

of understand what that means, could you contextualize

25:20

that? And I think, you know, sort of specifically within

25:23

talking about pride?

25:24

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you know, it's a good

25:27

question in any case, because psychologists use the word

25:29

adaptive in lots of different ways, which can be really

25:31

confusing. Sometimes by adaptive people means

25:33

it's good for you, you know, it's good for your mental health.

25:36

And that's actually not what I meant. What I mean,

25:38

when I say adaptive is that it's something

25:40

that we as a species evolved to do

25:42

or to have, because it increases our

25:44

fitness and fitness has a very specific meaning

25:47

from evolutionary perspective, it essentially just

25:49

means increases your genes, chances

25:51

of replicating. So basically, things that are adaptive

25:53

are things that make it more likely that you're going to

25:55

survive and reproduce or survive long

25:57

enough to reproduce. And so

25:58

from that perspective,

26:00

The reason Pride is adaptive is because

26:02

it helps us get status. And the way that it

26:04

does that, interestingly enough, varies

26:06

for the two kinds of pride. So this is where I think things

26:08

get really interesting, because from a sort of mental

26:10

health perspective, authentic pride is adaptive

26:13

and heuristic pride is it. Like I said, it can lead to all

26:15

kinds of psychological dysfunctions and poor relationships.

26:18

But from an evolutionary perspective, both

26:20

prides are adaptive because they both help

26:22

us get status, but they do it through

26:24

very different pathways.

26:26

So authentic pride basically motivates us to

26:28

achieve, as I just kind of explained. And

26:30

as a result of that, it helps us get a kind

26:33

of status that

26:33

we call prestige. And prestige

26:36

is essentially the kind of status that's based on earned

26:38

respect. Prestige's leaders are people

26:40

who have achieved a great deal. They're smart,

26:42

they're wise, they have various abilities that everyone

26:45

else admires. And as a result

26:47

of that, people look up to them and people willingly

26:50

choose to defer to them. Right? The group sort of thinks

26:52

this guy knows what he's doing. If I follow

26:54

him, it's going to be good for me. It's going to be good for everyone.

26:56

I'm going to learn a lot and everyone will benefit. That's

26:59

one way of getting status. But there

27:01

is another way of getting status as well. And

27:03

this is what we call dominance.

27:05

And dominant leaders are people who

27:07

don't necessarily contribute anything of value to

27:09

the group. They're not big achievers. They're not people

27:11

who have special competencies or skills, but

27:13

they're people who have control

27:15

over some resource that everyone else in the group thinks

27:18

is valuable. So for example, perhaps they're particularly wealthy,

27:20

or perhaps they're just big and strong, and they wield

27:23

their control over that resource in

27:25

a really manipulative and aggressive way, essentially

27:27

threatening and intimidating other people and

27:30

forcing them to give them the power that they

27:32

feel they want. So you can think of it down in the leader

27:34

is sort of the boss who threatens his employees, right?

27:36

If you don't do what I say, I'm going to fire you. People

27:38

give that

27:39

boss power, right? Employees will do whatever

27:41

the boss says, they'll defer to him, but they don't want

27:43

to, they don't respect him. They're not giving him the

27:45

power because they're willingly choosing to, they're

27:47

doing it because they feel that they have no choice

27:49

at all. And we found in some studies that in

27:51

fact, both dominance and prestige are effective

27:54

ways of getting social influence. Both of

27:56

these tactics actually work in terms of

27:58

getting ahead. So they're both going to be a doctor strategies,

28:01

but one, prestige seems to be

28:03

really particularly facilitated by authentic

28:05

pride, whereas dominance is

28:07

facilitated by hubristic pride. The reason

28:10

for that is because hubristic pride, again, is an emotion

28:12

that makes people feel like they're better than everyone else,

28:14

makes them willing to engage in aggressiveness

28:16

and manipulation, basically tactics that are required

28:19

in order to take advantage of others, to advance their

28:21

own needs and desires, and basically puts

28:23

people in a mental state that's almost exactly

28:26

what you would want in order to attain dominance,

28:28

in order to sort of take

28:29

over, take control, be aggressive,

28:32

and really just dominate others and force them to give

28:34

you the power that you're looking for.

28:36

So, the data shows that both paths

28:38

can potentially be ways to achieve

28:41

status and achieve what you want to achieve.

28:43

That's right. That's right. So, we did a study

28:46

in which we looked at this where we had undergraduates

28:48

come to our lab and work together

28:50

to complete a task. They basically had to work together

28:52

for about 20 minutes on this task. We

28:55

did this because it's sort of an ideal way to

28:57

allow hierarchies to naturally form. Whenever

28:59

you get a small group of humans together and

29:01

don't assign a leader, leaders kind of naturally

29:04

emerge, right? Someone just takes charge, other

29:06

people follow in line. It's just sort of how it works

29:08

in our species.

29:08

So, we want to know, well, how does this happen? What

29:10

determines

29:11

who gets control over the group? So, they

29:13

did the task, and then afterwards, we had everyone

29:15

in the group rate everyone else in terms

29:17

of how dominant and prestigious they were, so

29:20

how much they looked up to each person and how much they

29:22

were basically afraid of each person. And also,

29:24

how influential everyone was. So, who really

29:26

had influence over the group? We also measured

29:29

how influential everyone was by having outside

29:31

observers watch videos that we had taken.

29:34

So, we recorded these interactions on video, had outside

29:36

observers watch the videos, and then they told us

29:38

who they thought the most influential people in the group were. And

29:40

that's a useful way of kind of getting beyond just people

29:42

in the group who now have come to know these people and have

29:44

relationships. They're going to be a little bit biased. And

29:46

then we looked at actual influence in terms of the task

29:48

itself. So, who actually determined how

29:50

the task played out? Who made the decisions

29:52

about what the group was going to do for the task?

29:55

And what we found was that the people in the group who

29:57

were rated by their peers in that highly

30:00

dominant,

30:01

were just as likely to get influence

30:03

over the group as were the people who were rated by

30:05

their peers as highly prestigious. And in fact, there was

30:07

actually no difference in terms of how effective

30:09

dominance was as a strategy compared to prestige.

30:11

Both were equally effective in terms of being

30:14

rated as highly influential by your peers, being

30:16

rated as highly influential by outside observers,

30:18

and in terms of actually getting influence

30:20

in terms of determining the outcomes on

30:22

that task. So that suggests that even though, you know,

30:24

we might think we're dominant leaders, those people,

30:26

we don't like them. And that's what we found in fact, the people

30:28

who worked in these groups told us they did not like

30:31

the people who are dominant, they actually

30:32

said they were free of them. But it's still

30:34

an effective way of getting power, right? Even

30:36

though we don't like these people, we give them power

30:38

because we're sort of afraid not to.

30:40

Despite the fact that they didn't

30:42

like the dominant leaders, they still

30:45

followed them, listened to them, and did what they want,

30:47

which… That's exactly right, yeah. …it kind of makes

30:49

me think of the old saying, you know, would you rather be

30:52

loved or feared? It seems like the research

30:54

demonstrates either one might work.

30:56

Yeah, unfortunately, right? It sort of

30:58

turns out either one might work. Now that said,

31:00

you know, if you think about it that way, well,

31:03

either one works, but one

31:04

gets you power and love,

31:06

right? People really like prestigious people. They

31:08

respect

31:09

them, they look up to them, and they also

31:11

give them power. The other gets you power,

31:13

but tremendous hate. And so if you have

31:15

the choice, you know, there's sort of no

31:17

reason to go for dominance over prestige if

31:20

you have the option, right? If you can contribute something

31:22

of value to the group, if you can be a nice person, if you can

31:24

be helpful to others and still get power that way,

31:26

that's the better way to go simply because, you

31:28

know, it's not fun to be disliked. There's all kinds of negative

31:31

psychological consequences that I mentioned before

31:33

to hubris to pride, and that comes with dominance

31:35

as well. And, you know, the

31:37

thing about dominance is because they're not

31:39

liked, their staying power is going

31:41

to be fairly limited, right? People will follow

31:43

them and do what they say as long as they feel threatened or

31:45

intimidated by them. But as soon as they

31:47

don't, right, when a diamond loses his power

31:49

for one reason or another, perhaps his wealth comes

31:51

into question or you can think of, you know, in chimpanzees,

31:54

the alpha male is no longer as strong as

31:56

he once was. When that happens, that

31:58

person's going to lose all power. in fact, perhaps even

32:00

be exiled from the group, right? You see, coalitions

32:02

will often form to overtake a dominant leader because

32:05

no one likes this person and everyone wants to get rid

32:07

of him. In contrast, if you're a prestigious leader, even

32:10

if for some reason you no longer have your power,

32:13

for whatever reason, perhaps you're not as wise

32:14

as you once were, your skills deteriorate,

32:17

people will still find a place in the society for you

32:19

because you've retained their love, right? People really like

32:21

you. And so they won't kick you out of the group even if

32:23

you're not as powerful as you once were.

32:25

Doesn't some of the research show that

32:28

dominance in some context was actually more

32:30

effective than prestige?

32:32

Yeah, so that's this other study that we did more recently.

32:34

So what we did there was we had groups work

32:37

together again and we assigned

32:39

a leader in each case. We just randomly sort of said

32:41

one person in the group was gonna be the leader. And we had them

32:43

complete a bunch of different tasks together. And

32:46

then afterwards, and we looked at how well they

32:48

did in all the tasks and we had everyone rate

32:50

their leader on the dominance and prestige again. And

32:52

our question was,

32:53

who's gonna do better on these tasks? The

32:55

groups that are led by someone who happens to be really

32:57

high in prestige or the groups that are led by someone

32:59

who happens to be really high

33:00

in dominance. And we sort of thought the prestigious

33:02

leader was gonna kind of win the day and everyone would,

33:05

they'd like that experience better, they enjoy

33:07

it and they would do better on the tasks. And that's

33:09

not what happened. The groups led by a prestigious

33:11

leader did do better on one particular kind

33:13

of task. It was a task that required creative

33:15

out of the box thinking. So it's called

33:18

this brick test. Basically people have to come up with as

33:20

many creative uses for a brick as they can.

33:22

And so it really is sort of this exercise and spitballing,

33:24

feeling open,

33:25

being comfortable with yourself and with your group. And

33:27

it's kind of a fun exercise. And so a prestigious leader

33:29

was actually very good at getting people to generate a lot

33:32

of really creative answers in the brick test. But the

33:34

other three tasks that we gave them, which required more

33:36

analytical thinking,

33:37

kind of reaching one right answer on

33:39

a complicated

33:39

logical test. For all of

33:41

those tasks, groups actually did better if

33:43

they were led by someone who was high in dominance. And

33:46

that really surprised us. And I think

33:48

it's very, it potentially has really important

33:50

implications in terms of corporations and

33:53

what kind of leader we want for different tasks. However,

33:55

one caveat that I think is important to bear in mind

33:57

is because we randomly designed.

35:59

think the large reason why he won the primary election

36:02

is because he attacked all of the other candidates

36:04

so harshly that many of them backed

36:06

down and more importantly

36:08

Republican activists who wanted to criticize

36:10

him and perhaps support someone else couldn't because

36:13

the reputational costs were too strong right

36:15

he was attacking these people to the point where their

36:17

reputations were being destroyed through social media

36:19

and they sort of had no choice but to back down to

36:21

protect themselves

36:22

and so this is really how dominance works people

36:24

are afraid to take on a dominant leader in

36:26

the case of Trump I think it's because you know he's

36:28

very effective at using aggression and at

36:30

the same time gaining the support

36:32

of a lot of people who see him as the tough

36:35

guy who's going to be on their side and then other

36:37

politicians have really been afraid of

36:40

angering those people angering you know that his

36:42

mob of supporters who see him as

36:44

the guy who's gonna fight for them and so that you

36:46

create this situation where there's really no way

36:48

for these people to take on Trump without risking

36:51

angering the people who support they feel they need

36:53

it's

36:53

a fascinating and relevant real life case

36:56

study and kind of topics we're talking

36:58

about changing directions completely at

37:00

the beginning of the interview you touched on kind of

37:02

the concept of self-conscious emotions

37:05

I'd love to learn a little bit more about that and kind of

37:07

what those entail

37:08

sure so self-conscious emotions there

37:10

are special category of emotions that we

37:13

experience as humans and we don't think any

37:15

other animal experiences you know there's there's

37:17

evidence that other animals have dominance and submission

37:20

and certainly that's a precursor of pride and shame

37:22

that's probably evolutionary origins of pride and shame

37:24

why and dominance and submission seen in other primates

37:27

but we humans are the only ones who really

37:29

experience these self-conscious emotions because

37:31

we're the only ones who have a fully complex

37:33

sense of self so humans are the

37:35

species that basically can think

37:37

about who we are can kind of hold that in our

37:40

minds and then evaluate it we can think

37:42

about what kind of person do I want to be and is

37:44

who I am today is that getting closer

37:47

to the kind of person I want to be or is it

37:49

getting farther away do I feel good about the things

37:51

I've done today or do I not feel good about those

37:53

things do I feel like I need

37:54

to change who I am right now these are really complicated

37:56

cognitive processes and we really do see them

37:59

only in humans and emotions that we feel

38:01

when we make these evaluations, those are the subconscious

38:03

emotions.

38:04

And I know you haven't researched it in nearly

38:07

as much detail, but I'd be very curious to hear

38:09

kind of about some of the research you've done with

38:11

shame and what your thoughts are about shame.

38:14

Yeah, so shame is in many ways the antithesis

38:16

of pride. You know, pride, and I think it's a really

38:18

important thing, whereas pride is motivating, you know, both

38:21

because we feel it, we want to feel it more, because

38:23

we like it. There's studies that show when we think about

38:25

how much pride we'll feel from doing something good like

38:28

resisting temptation, that gets us to

38:30

be more likely to do that good thing. You know, if

38:32

we think about pride, we'll resist temptation more.

38:34

Shame is not motivating in this way. There's

38:36

very little evidence to suggest that shame actually

38:38

motivates people to change their behavior for the good.

38:41

There's evidence to suggest that when people feel shame, they

38:43

want to be different. They wish they had a different

38:45

self. They really don't like themselves. Shame is

38:47

this kind of horrible, negative, global

38:49

feeling about the self, but it's almost demotivating.

38:52

Because we feel so bad about ourselves in such a global

38:54

way, we feel powerless and sort

38:56

of hopeless. And shame typically makes people want

38:59

to hide and run away from their problems and escape

39:01

them rather than try to approach them and do better.

39:04

So we actually have one study where we looked at recovering

39:06

alcoholics. These were people who were newly

39:08

sober trying to sober up, and they came

39:10

to our lab, and we had them talk about the last

39:12

time that they had a drink. And we had them do this

39:14

while they were on video. And so this is like a really

39:16

intense shame kind of moment for these people, right? This is

39:18

often, you know, this

39:19

time when they badmed out, the

39:20

moment that perhaps led them to seek sobriety.

39:23

And then, you know, we say goodbye to them, and then we

39:25

have them come back to our lab about four or five months

39:27

later just to see how they're doing. And it's

39:29

really interesting because what we find is

39:31

in that first time they come in, they talk about

39:33

the last time they drank, we code their nonverbal

39:36

behaviors while they're talking about their drink for displays

39:38

of shame. And displays of shame basically look

39:40

like the opposite of displays of pride. The head does

39:42

tilt it down, posture is restricted and

39:44

narrowed, they're sort of hiding themselves away.

39:47

And what we find is that the more shame these

39:49

people show when talking about the last time

39:51

they drank, the more likely they are to relapse

39:54

when they come back four months later. That is to say the more

39:56

likely it is that they've now had a drink

39:58

or several drinks. In fact,

40:00

the amount of shame they show while talking

40:02

about their last drink actually predicts the number

40:04

of drinks they've consumed, right? So essentially

40:07

how bad the relapse is. So that's kind

40:09

of neat evidence to suggest that if we feel

40:12

shame about something, about ourselves,

40:14

that's not going to help us get over that thing. It's

40:16

actually going to potentially do the reverse and

40:18

make us go ahead and do more of that bad thing. And

40:21

I think that's because we sort of think, you know, I feel

40:23

terrible about myself. This is who I am, but

40:25

there's no getting out of it. So I might as well embrace it

40:27

and just be this person.

40:29

So how can we deal

40:31

more effectively with shame?

40:33

I mean, I think the best solution to shame

40:35

is to try to instead feel guilt. So

40:38

lots of research suggests that guilt is a

40:40

much more adaptive negative self-conscious emotion

40:42

because instead of being about the entire global self,

40:45

I'm a bad person, it's much more focused on

40:47

the specific bad thing that happened.

40:49

So when we feel shame, we feel, you know, I'm

40:51

horrible,

40:52

but when we feel guilt, we feel I did a bad

40:54

thing. I messed up. You know, I forgot

40:56

something. I didn't study hard for the exam. And

40:58

so there's a solution there, right? Rather than sort

41:00

of the whole self being the thing that's incriminated,

41:03

it's just one behavior that's problematic.

41:05

You can change that behavior. You can say, okay, I'm going to

41:07

study harder next time. I'm going to work more on

41:10

this. I'm going to change what I did. And studies do show

41:12

that in fact, guilt is motivating. It motivates

41:14

people to fix the situation, to apologize

41:16

if they hurt someone and to basically try to do

41:19

better in the future. So that's really the best way

41:21

to do it. And really the only

41:22

way to do that is

41:23

when something goes wrong, not to attribute

41:25

it to who you are as a person globally,

41:27

but rather to something

41:29

more specific that you did.

41:31

I think that's a really important distinction and one that

41:33

we won't go down this rabbit hole, but ties into

41:35

in many ways, some of the things we talked about

41:37

many times on the podcast, which is kind of the idea of

41:40

the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset and the

41:42

notion of, you know, you can always sort

41:44

of change yourself. A sort of a

41:46

related question, how do we cultivate

41:49

authentic pride?

41:51

Well, you know, I think the best thing to do in

41:53

terms of thinking about how to cultivate authentic pride

41:55

is to think about the kind of person

41:57

you want to be. really

42:00

interesting point that we often don't do. We

42:02

often kind of are just living our lives day to day, getting

42:04

by, everything's fine. Not really thinking

42:06

about whether we're becoming or

42:09

doing the things that we do to become the kind of person

42:11

that we really want to be, to develop the sense itself

42:13

that's most important to us, to have an identity

42:16

that we can feel good about. And often if we do, what

42:18

we realize is we're not. But typically more often

42:20

what happens is we just sort of feel like something is missing

42:22

in our lives. In my book, I tell the story of Dean

42:25

Carnezas, who's this ultra marathon runner who

42:27

spent most of his life in a business career. And

42:30

he was doing really well. He was

42:31

having one success after another. He

42:33

had a happy marriage, all was fine. And

42:36

then the moment he turned 30, he just had this

42:38

overwhelming sense that his life was not going

42:40

the way that he wanted it to, that he wasn't satisfied

42:43

with the person that he was. And he couldn't figure out what

42:45

was wrong, but that night he went out drinking with his friends

42:47

to celebrate his birthday. His wife went home early

42:49

and this woman started flirting

42:51

with him and he sort of realized he was close to possibly

42:54

ruining his life, flirting with an attractive

42:56

stranger. And he just started running and

42:58

he ended up running all the way from his house in San Francisco,

43:01

about 30

43:01

miles down the coast to Half Moon Bay

43:03

in California. And this is someone who used

43:06

to be a runner when he was in high school, but he hadn't run

43:08

in I think 10 or 15 years at that point.

43:10

So you can imagine how he felt the next day.

43:12

But what he realized during this amazing run

43:14

was that that's what he wanted to be doing, that he was

43:16

someone who his sense of self was based on pushing

43:19

himself physically to extreme levels. And

43:21

that's really what he needed to be doing with his life.

43:23

And so he made that a priority. And he started by

43:25

on the weekends running and running nonstop

43:28

and started to do 24 hour runs, which

43:30

I had to believe that they exist 100 mile

43:32

runs. And eventually he turned his whole life around and

43:35

actually was able to give up his business career and

43:37

parlay a running career into a profitable enterprise.

43:39

And that's not something everyone can do.

43:41

But I do think figuring out who

43:44

you are, and what kind of person you want to be

43:46

and what things you can do to best become

43:48

that person, that's

43:49

sort of really the answer to try to achieve

43:52

authentic pride.

43:53

That's one piece of homework that you would give to

43:55

somebody who's listening to this episode. Homework.

43:57

That's interesting. I guess I would

43:59

say

43:59

Like I said, think about if

44:02

there's something missing in your life in terms

44:04

of attaining a sense of self-satisfaction.

44:06

You can think about it as pride, but I think pride

44:09

is tough. We often don't like to talk about ourselves.

44:11

He's feeling proud of ourselves because we get it confused

44:13

with hubris to pride. So just think about satisfaction.

44:16

What aren't you satisfied by in your life? Maybe

44:18

it's work. Maybe you're bored at work

44:20

and you're not mastering things. You're not having

44:22

opportunities to master new things. Maybe work is fine,

44:24

but you don't have an opportunity to be creative in your life and you're

44:26

someone who really craves the creative outlet. Or maybe

44:29

like Dean

44:29

Kranazis, you want to physically punish

44:31

yourself or physically challenge yourself I should

44:33

say and train for a marathon. I think thinking about

44:35

that kind of thing can open up new windows,

44:37

new avenues to start thinking

44:39

about things that people can do to

44:41

start feeling more of a sense of self-entropy in their

44:43

lives. And again, it doesn't have to be a career switch. It

44:45

can be picking up a hobby on the weekend, taking

44:48

a photography class, helping out others, coaching

44:50

your kid's faculty. There's lots of different ways I think

44:52

to get these feelings, but the first thing to do

44:54

is probably to think about what's

44:56

missing. What am I not doing? What am I lacking

44:58

in my life?

44:59

So we touched on at the top of your new book, Take

45:02

Pride, Why the Deadliest Sin Holds

45:04

the Secret to Human Success. I'm curious,

45:07

obviously listeners who want to kind of dig into this topic,

45:09

that's a great place to start. What are some other

45:11

resources you'd recommend for people who want to

45:13

dig in and do some more research about

45:15

this?

45:16

Well, I mean, I guess it depends what level of the research

45:18

is. The book is a good sort of very broad overview

45:20

of all the work that I've done on Pride and what others have done

45:23

and then related topics on the things that we've been talking

45:25

about like sense of self and identity and evolutionary

45:28

science. That's one way to go, but if you want a more

45:30

in-depth look on my website, all

45:32

my research papers are available there. So anyone

45:34

who's interested can go to my website and

45:36

check that out under publications, download papers

45:39

or take a look if you want the more scientific version of

45:41

that kind of stuff. And then if you're interested in this

45:43

topic more broadly, it's sort of how to use

45:46

psychology or findings from social and emotional

45:48

psychology to achieve in various

45:50

ways. I think Angela Duckworth's new

45:52

book is a great version of that. She talks about

45:54

grit and I think grit is very much related to authentic

45:57

pride. So that's a book that people might be interested in

45:59

seeking out.

45:59

for evolutionary science more general, I always

46:02

recommend Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate.

46:04

It's a bit of an older book, but it's a fantastic

46:06

book and I think

46:07

still the best book out there in terms of just generally

46:09

understanding what is evolutionary

46:11

psychology, how did our minds evolve and why.

46:14

It's really a readable take on that,

46:16

so I'd recommend that.

46:17

And where can people find you and the book

46:19

online?

46:20

Sure. If you go to UBC,

46:22

that's University of British Columbia, so ubc-emotionlab.ca,

46:27

and then if you do backslash take-pride,

46:30

that will get you right to the books page. But if you

46:32

just go to ubc-emotionlab.ca,

46:34

you can see all of my work and the kinds of stuff we do in my lab.

46:37

Well, Jessica, this has been a fascinating conversation,

46:39

very surprising kind of take on what

46:42

many people consider sort of a negative

46:44

attribute. So it's been really interesting to hear about

46:46

your research and some of the really cool conclusions

46:49

about authentic pride and prestige.

46:52

So thank you very much for being on the Science of Success.

46:55

Oh, you're welcome. Thanks so much for having me.

46:57

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46:59

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