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Hidden Brain
Emotions 2.0: The Feeling that Moves Us Forward
00:50:17
For centuries, philosophers and theologians have warned about the dangers of hubris. It’s an emotion that can make us arrogant, egotistical, and reckless. But psychologist Jessica Tracy suggests this caution is too broad. She argues that when we see pride only as a negative emotion, we miss out on all the powerful ways it can also be a driver of creativity, altruism, and accomplishment.
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- [00:00]
Shankar Vedantam
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. In April 2018, a group of engineers and designers gathered on a dock in the port of Everett in Washington State. They were there to hear from a 56 year old inventor and entrepreneur, the creator of the Titan submersible. As a child, Stockton Rush had dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Less than perfect eyesight quashed those plans. And he wasn't interested in simply going along on a rocket ride. I didn't want to go up into space as a tourist, he told a reporter. I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise. I wanted to explore. So he turned his attention to another mysterious realm, the depths of the ocean. He founded a company, Oceangate, with the aim of ferrying passengers thousands of feet underwater, where they could view the wreckage of the Titanic. He led the design of the Titan, casting himself as an innovator unconstrained by convention. Instead of encasing his entire vessel in titanium, as was the industry practice for submarines, he built its hull out of lighter weight, carbon fiber. I think it was General MacArthur who said, you, you're remembered for the rules you break. And I've broken some rules to make this, he said in an interview. The carbon fiber and titanium, there's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did. When experts outside and inside his company raised concerns about safety, he brushed them off. Standing on the dock in the port of Everett on that day in April, he boasted, we know more about what's happening in this hull than anyone has ever known. The voyage of the Titan, he added, will be one of the great moments of submersibles. He turned to Tony Neeson, Oceangate's director of engineering, who lifted a bottle of champagne and smashed it against the hull.
- [02:02]
Jessica Tracy
And with this ivy christen Titan.
- [02:13]
Shankar Vedantam
Five years later, Stockton, Rush and four passengers were killed instantly when the Titan imploded on a deep sea dive. For centuries, philosophers and theologians have warned us about the dangers of hubris. It's an emotion that can make us arrogant, egotistical and reckless. This week on Hidden Brain, the double edged sword of pride. Support for Hidden Brain comes from jobs. Ohio, in partnership with the state of Ohio. What would make someone move from California to Ohio? Maybe it's the comfortable, convenient lifestyle or the low cost of living. Or maybe it's the job, that next big opportunity you've been wanting for a while now. If you're a tech pro, considering your next move, Ohio deserves to be on your list. See More reasons@callohiohome.com Support for Hidden Brain comes from Robert Half. Robert Half research indicates nine out of 10 hiring managers are having difficulty hiring. That's why you need Robert Half. Their specialized recruiting professionals engage their skills with their award winning AI to connect businesses of all sizes with highly skilled talent in finance and accounting, technology, marketing and creative, legal and administrative and customer support. At Robert Half they know talent. Visit roberthal.com today. Support for hidden Brain comes from Abbott. Let's talk about a small thing that can make a big difference if you have diabetes. The Freestyle Libre 3 sensor. The sensor gives you real time glucose readings so you can see the impact of every meal and activity to make better choices. This is progress. You can try the sensor at FreestyleLibre US terms and conditions apply for prescription only safety info found @freestylelibre us. They say that pride goes before a fall. It's a warning that many of us have been taught from the time we were children. Watch out. Our parents and teachers have told us being prideful is a bad thing. At the University of British Columbia, psychologist Jessica Tracy has spent many years thinking about whether that warning we've all heard is too broad. Jessica Tracy, welcome to Hidden Brain.
- [05:03]
Jessica Tracy
Thanks so much for having me. It's really great to be here.
- [05:06]
Shankar Vedantam
Jessica, you found yourself drawn to the story of a man named Dean Karnassis. Who was Dean Karnasses? What was he like as a teenager and a young man?
- [05:16]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, this is a really interesting story. So Dean grew up in California, Southern California, and he was a pretty active guy. He ran on the cross country team and he loved it. And you know, he describes running along the beach every day and chasing waves with a coach that just kind of really encouraged in the team a love of running. Right. Much more than competitiveness. But at some point before Dean graduated high school, unfortunately, the coach retired. Dean did not like the new coach. He was much more of a sort of a hard type guy who blew whistles a lot. And so Dean quit and he basically stopped running for kind of the next 10 to 15 years. And then he found himself as an adult working in business. He was in sales. He was pretty successful, doing pretty well. But somehow he had this sense that something wasn't right.
- [06:20]
Shankar Vedantam
On the morning of his 30th birthday, Dean Karnassas woke up with a conviction that his life was on the wrong track.
- [06:28]
Jessica Tracy
Something was not the way that he wanted it to be and he wasn't sure what that was. Right. He sort of just felt this sense of there's something missing here. I feel a sense of emptiness. And what he told his wife was. I feel like I'm in a routine, you know, as many of us feel when we have a job and it's going well. And he'd been succeeding. He'd just gotten a new deal kind of secured and was on his way to getting a good promotion. But what he saw was a future where 30 years from now, he was doing exactly the same thing, only as he put it, a lot older and maybe balder, and it wasn't what he wanted.
- [07:07]
Shankar Vedantam
So that same night he went out drinking with his friends. And something happened at the nightclub that night. Tell me that story, Jessica.
- [07:15]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, so he goes out to celebrate his 30th birthday, as many people do. His wife goes home early, she's tired, and after she leaves, an attractive stranger starts flirting with him. He's obviously a little bit buzzed and flirts back, and he's happily married. But all of a sudden he realizes what he's doing is reaching for something and this is not what he wants to be reaching for. He immediately leaves the nightclub, goes home to his home in San Francisco, digs through his garage and finds this old, torn up pair of running shoes that I think he uses for gardening at the time, puts them on and just starts running. And he ends up running. I mean, at this point, it's almost midnight. Runs from his house and ends up running all night long, 30 miles down the coast all the way to Half Moon Bay. And you know, he hasn't run, mind you, in at least 10 years prior. He finds himself at one point on the top of a mountain and he can see, you know, over the fog and the stars. And all of a sudden he pauses and he realizes that in that moment he feels more himself and more alive than he has in years.
- [08:35]
Shankar Vedantam
If you look carefully at Dean's past, what he did that night was not entirely out of character. Indeed, you could say that the career path he was on was what was out of character.
- [08:46]
Jessica Tracy
This is a guy who, when he was 12, got in his bicycle and biked from his parents house somewhere in Los Angeles to his grandparents house in pasadena. Took him 12, 12 hours. And he had no idea. 12 years old, he had no idea how to do that. So basically it was a matter of winding through random neighborhoods until he found ones that looked right. This is the kind of person he was, right, sort of seeking adventure and not only not afraid of pain that comes with doing hard work, but actually almost seeking it out. That somehow the pain of physical exercise, physical struggle was the thing that really gave him a sense of wholeness. And that's what he was looking for, and it's what he found that night on his birthday.
- [09:27]
Shankar Vedantam
The midnight run transformed Dean's outlook. I asked Jessica what changes came about as a result of his epiphany.
- [09:35]
Jessica Tracy
Well, after recovering from the strenuous run, he realized this is what he wanted to be doing. He ended up quitting his job, his very successful business career, taking a major leap of faith, know, saying to his. His wife, listen, this might be economically hard on us for a little bit, but this is what I need to do. And he ended up devoting his life to running. He became what is known as an ultra marathon runner, which means he runs distances longer than a marathon's 26 miles quite regularly. And he ended up running all of the longest races in the world. Right? These are a hundred mile races, I think several hundred mile relay races. He did one of those entirely himself. You're supposed to switch and have teams do it. And instead he just ran the whole thing. He ran through, you know, a desert at one point, and many of these races he actually won. He ended up writing a book about his experiences called the Ultra Marathon Man. And the book was so popular and influential that he ended up getting named Time magazine one of the most influential people in the year. And he really changed people's lives. I mean, I think many, many people read this book and realized, okay, maybe it's not running for me, but there's something in here that I also need to do, right? That my life also is not going the way that it feels like it should be going. Even though everything's going perfectly well, there's something missing. I also need to take the leap that Dean Karnazz took.
- [10:58]
Shankar Vedantam
I understand that his longest race ever was 350 miles, and to complete it, he ran continuously for three days and nights without sleep. That's insane, Jessica.
- [11:10]
Jessica Tracy
It is insane. I agree. I don't know. Honestly, I don't know how he does it. He tells funny stories about calling on his cell phone to order a pizza delivery. And he tells the pizza delivery guy, I will be at a particular location in an hour. Bring me the pizza. And the guy brings him the pizza literally on the road in the middle of the night. He then proceeds to eat it right out of the box, holding the box in one hand, grabbing slices with another while running the whole time.
- [11:45]
Shankar Vedantam
So Dean says that when people hear his story, they often have a couple of questions. What are these questions?
- [11:52]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, so the first question is, how, right? How do you do this? And that involves all kind of technical Details like training and ordering food on the run. But then the second question, which I think is the much more interesting question, and he says is the much harder question to answer, is why? Why would someone possibly put themselves through this much pain? What are you trying to get out of this? And I agree, that's a really interesting question.
- [12:19]
Shankar Vedantam
What do you think the answer is? Does he know the answer?
- [12:23]
Jessica Tracy
What Dean would say, I believe, is it's what he needs to do to be the person that he believes he is. And I agree with that. What I think is that Dean is looking for a feeling of pride. Right. It's a feeling that doesn't come automatically just because we're succeeding in ways that our society tells us we need to succeed. Right. He was a successful business person. He was supporting his family. He was getting promotions at work. But he wasn't being the person that he saw himself to be. He wasn't meeting his own goals for his identity. And that's what we all need to be. And that's what brings us pride. And I think all of us, when we're not getting that, we know it.
- [13:13]
Shankar Vedantam
So if you look down history, philosophers and theologians have long warned us about the dangers of pride. Can you tell us a little bit about that long tradition and what these thinkers have had to tell us?
- [13:25]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, it's really interesting. If you look historically, almost every early thinker talked about pride as essentially a sin. Clearly what they're talking about is the pride that makes people feel like they're better than others. It makes people arrogant. It makes the people behave in a way that we all find really off putting. They are superior. They take control. No one really likes that. And I think there's reasons why it doesn't fit with a kind of religious perspective, which is probably why every religion, including Buddhism, Taoism, they've all said that pride is really problematic.
- [14:05]
Shankar Vedantam
History is replete with stories about prideful people who ended up wrecking their lives and the lives of the people around them. Prideful military leaders have led armies to catastrophic defeats. Prideful entrepreneurs have led their companies to bankruptcy. Prideful acquaintances and co workers are unpleasant to be around. In the case of Dean Karnassis, the ultra marathon man, pride led to almost mythical feats of strength and endurance. How can the same emotion be responsible for such radically different outcomes? When we come back, research into how pride actually comes in two flavors and how these two kinds of pride lead us in very different directions. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Support for Hidden brain comes from LinkedIn. When you're hiring for your small business, you want to find quality professionals that are right for the role. LinkedIn Jobs has the tools to help find the right professionals for your team faster and for free. LinkedIn isn't just a job board. LinkedIn helps you hire professionals you cannot find anywhere else, even those who are not actively searching for a new job but might be open to the perfect role in a given month. Over 70% of LinkedIn users don't visit other leading job sites. So if you're not looking on LinkedIn, you're looking in the wrong place on LinkedIn, 86% of small businesses get a qualified candidate within 24 hours. Hire professionals like a professional on LinkedIn. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com HB that's LinkedIn.com HB to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. The most innovative companies are going further with T Mobile for business like Delta Air Lines.
- [16:19]
Jessica Tracy
Together with T Mobile for Business, Delta.
- [16:21]
Shankar Vedantam
Air lines is putting 5G into the hands of ground staff so they can better assist on the go travelers with real time information. From the Delta Sky Club to the Jetbridge, this is elevating customer experience and tractor supply trusts. 5G solutions from T Mobile for business to connect over 2200 stores around the country with 5G business Internet. Plus T Mobile is powering AI solutions so tractor Supply team members can match shoppers with the products they need faster. This is enriching customer experience. Take your business further@t mobile.com now this is hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. The writer and philosopher John Ruskin said pride was at the bottom of all great mistakes. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri said pride was the deadliest of the seven deadly sins. Buddhists say pride is one of the 10 fetters that shackle individuals to an endless cycle of suffering. At the University of British Columbia, psychologist Jessica Tracy says those warnings miss the fact that there is more than one kind of pride. There is certainly the pride that drags us down, but also a version of pride that pulls us up. Jessica, you say we fundamentally misunderstood the emotion of pride. We've long thought of it as being one thing, when actually it's two things, one good, one bad. You say the good version is something you call authentic pride. What is authentic pride?
- [17:54]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah. So authentic pride is the pride that we feel when we've worked really hard for something that's important to us, meaning important to our identity, how we see ourselves. Sort of think about your best version of yourself and how you want to be in the next few years or even a lifetime, you put an effort to be that person, whether that's working really hard at school or at your job or even, you know, at a hobby. Maybe there's an artistic pursuit. Maybe you're a runner like Dean Karnazes. And when you succeed, you feel this intense sense of achievement. The feelings that people describe when they have it are things like, I feel accomplished, I feel productive, I feel a sense of self worth. That's what authentic pride is.
- [18:36]
Shankar Vedantam
So in some ways, all the things that you're pointing to reflect the fact that when we are doing difficult things, they often require long periods of sacrifice. Can you talk a moment about the role that authentic pride plays in our capacity to work hard toward future goals?
- [18:53]
Jessica Tracy
Absolutely. The reason that we work hard to discover, to innovate, to persist, is because we want to feel good about ourself. That is authentic pride. It is that feeling that pushes us to be the best that we can be. And if you think about it, in almost every individual's life, there's a choice, right? You can kind of do the minimal, make enough money to support yourself and then sit on the couch and watch tv, or you can do more. And pretty much all of us want to do more. And maybe we don't want to do more at our job. Maybe the job is just the thing that pays the bills. And our art is the place where we feel good about ourselves and that's where we put in more, maybe our family or raising a child or being a good partner. There's lots of different ways that pride can express itself and that we can find our way of fulfilling these needs, that we have to be a good person. But everyone has that need.
- [19:54]
Shankar Vedantam
Just as personal pride can cause us to make sacrifices to achieve long term goals, pride in our communities can encourage people to make sacrifices for each other.
- [20:04]
Jessica Tracy
I think that our identity exists not just in the personal level, but also the group level. And so, for example, Canadians, many Canadians are very proud of being a Canadian. And the result is that we care not just about how our own individual self succeeds, but how our group succeeds. What does the group do? And we therefore invest in the group, right? We vote in a certain way because we say, I want the group to go for these social policies that are really important to me, or support these particular efforts to help people. And all that's because this is part of our identity.
- [20:40]
Shankar Vedantam
All of us are the beneficiaries of authentic pride. Jessica believes that many of humankind's greatest scientists and artists were Fundamentally driven by the desire to experience this emotion. One example she cites is the painter.
- [20:53]
Jessica Tracy
Paul Gauguin, who's a famous Impressionist artist. He did these amazing pictures of Tahitian women. And he's a really interesting story because he lived in Paris and during the Impressionist, I guess, renaissance, when all these Impressionist artists like Monet and Van Gogh were all kind of hanging out. And he got really into that scene. But that's not what he did. He was a very successful businessman, kind of like Dean Karnazas, and he moved to the suburbs, and he was living this very bourgeoisie life. But then he would sneak off into the bohemian areas of Paris where all the artists were hanging out, and he would just be kind of fascinated by what was going on there. He began painting himself, realized that that was really what he loved, and eventually realized he couldn't live what to him felt like a split life.
- [21:45]
Shankar Vedantam
Right.
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Jessica Tracy
On the one hand, being this bourgeoisie businessman, on the other hand, really kind of identifying with the more bohemian artist world. So he quit his job, moved to Paris, had no job, had no money for a while, was kind of starving on the streets. Classical starving artist. But he did that because presumably that was what he needed to do. He had to give up what society had demanded of him and do something completely different and live a much more difficult life.
- [22:20]
Shankar Vedantam
You say that humans not only feel pride internally, but we also display it visibly so others can see that we're feeling it. And when someone displays pride, we automatically grant them a different kind of social status. Talk about this research, Jessica.
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Jessica Tracy
Yeah, so we've done a bunch of studies showing that pride is associated with a distinct nonverbal expression. So when people feel pride, they show it. They show it in their bodies as well as their face. They tilt their heads up a little bit, they smile a little bit, but they expand themselves. They make themselves bigger. They kind of puff up, Right. Their chest gets pushed out, their shoulders are pulled back often their arms are extended out, raised above their head, or hands on hips and. Yeah. In fact, we found that when people show this expression, other people who see them have this unavoidable automatic tendency to see them as higher status. They kind of can't help it.
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Shankar Vedantam
You also ran another study that looked at how the expression of pride changes how we are perceived during job interviews. Tell me about that work.
- [23:20]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah. So it's interesting. When you show a pride expression during an interview, you are more likely to be seen as high status, and you're generally more likely to be hired as well. It's complicated because you show too much pride in that interview. People take it as the bad kind of pride. And so it's this really tight balance people have to manage because there is this other side to pride that, as you noted, scholars throughout history have talked about. The classic distinction is between the person who subtly pushes out their chest, demonstrates confidence, speaks in a confident tone of voice, you know, isn't afraid to say their ideas and speak up. That's all good when it gets to the point of bragging, talking excessively about all your accomplishments, going beyond the subtle displays of pride to more grandiose, sort of taking up a lot of space, looming over someone else, you know, really expanding your body in various ways that aren't necessary. That's where it starts to veer into the more problematic pride.
- [24:35]
Shankar Vedantam
So we've talked at some length about authentic pride, but you've made a couple of mentions about this other kind of pride, which is hubristic pride, you call it. How would you define hubristic pride, Jessica?
- [24:46]
Jessica Tracy
So hubristic pride is, in short, a sense of arrogance, right? It's the feeling not just that I feel good about myself, but that I'm better than you, right? That and I'm better than most people. The words or the feelings that people describe when they feel it are things like arrogance, egotism, cocky, smug, pretentious. Right? These are all feelings that people do have, and we all have them from time to time. But they're not feelings that are particularly socially adaptive. Right? We don't. We don't like people who show these. These feelings. We don't like people who admit to them, even, and yet they are part of the human experience.
- [25:32]
Shankar Vedantam
Jessica once came by powerful examples of authentic and hubristic pride when she asked two students to describe their accomplishments and how their accomplishments made them feel.
- [25:43]
Jessica Tracy
A student who rated words high in authentic pride. They talked about winning the all league honor on their soccer team. And what they said was, you know, I'd worked really hard, and I felt really good about myself. All that hard work had paid off. And that's classic authentic pride. I mean, that is really. That's exactly what it is. You work hard, you get the achievement, and the achievement makes you feel pride in such a way that you're very focused on the effort that you put in, which, again, is reinforcing of that effort. The motivation then, is there to put that effort in again in the future. Now, we had this other undergrad who scored high on the words that indicate she'd been feeling a lot of hubristic pride. And what she said was, I found out I got a 4.0 GPA. I obviously found other people to try to tell my score to as many as I could because I wanted to share my success. And, you know, I think that's a really nice example because that is what hubristic pride makes people want to do. It makes us not just think, wow, I feel really good. I work so hard, you know, no, she's saying, where can I find other people to tell this to? And, of course that's what I want to do. Right? I obviously wanted to mention my success. And that's hubristic pride. It makes us want to brag. It makes us want to get attention from others, to kind of relive the pride experience, not by having more achievements, but by publicizing it as much as possible.
- [27:05]
Shankar Vedantam
Would it be accurate to say that in some ways, authentic pride is a more internal kind of pride, and hubristic pride might be more of an external kind of pride?
- [27:15]
Jessica Tracy
You know, they're both internal experiences. But I think you're right that with hubristic pride, there is this really strong motivation to share it with others by bragging often. That said, I also think this is where authentic pride can slip into hubristic pride. I think anytime we feel pride, we all have this automatic desire to maximize the feeling. It's a really good feeling. You know, possibly the best feeling is because you not only feel good, you feel good about yourself, right? This thing that you care about more than anything else has just done something that makes you feel awesome. And so right away, we think, okay, how do I make this last? How do I continue it? And one easy way that we've all learned is tell someone else, because they're going to congratulate you. They're going to tell you how awesome you are. That's going to maximize and lengthen and extend those feelings. The problem is, depending on who you tell, depending how many people you tell, and depending how you tell it, that's where it can risk sliding into hubristic pride.
- [28:12]
Shankar Vedantam
I understand that you and others have examined whether there are personality differences associated with these two kinds of pride. What have you found?
- [28:20]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, they're really different personalities. It's quite interesting and quite stark. So people who tend to feel hubristic pride tend to be what I would call a much darker personality than people who tend to feel authentic pride. People who tend to feel authentic pride basically have all the good personality traits. They're extroverted, they're agreeable, they're conscientious. So they're hardworking. They're really achievement motivated. They also tend to be good relationship partners. They care about others. They care about being helpful to others. People who tend to feel hubristic pride show none of those traits. They basically are disagreeable. They're often unconscientious, so they don't actually work all that hard. And they're not particularly good in relationships. They don't have the same kind of empathy for others that people high in authentic pride do. And they tend to be selfish. They also tend to engage in behaviors that we would even call immoral or potentially socially problematic. They're Machiavellian, so they sort of are willing to take advantage of others for their own benefit. They can be selfish, they can be hostile, and they can be aggressive.
- [29:32]
Shankar Vedantam
I understand that you have induced both authentic pride and hubristic pride in volunteers in lab experiments and found that these different kinds of pride produce very different downstream behaviors. Like what, Jessica?
- [29:47]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, so, you know, it's not easy to induce, I will say hubristic pride, especially in Canada, I should say, where there's a lot of social regulation of hubristic pride. It's not, not an accepted thing to feel at all. In Canada, there's. The norms are all about humility. So you see people really trying to veer away from it. But if we push and we say, come on, everyone's felt this way at some time, we sometimes can get it. And what we'll find is people are more willing to do things like show prejudice against out group members. They demonstrate lower empathy for others. They essentially become more likely to engage in these kinds of behaviors that are characteristic of people who are prone to hubristic pride, which is basically putting others down, showing low empathy for others, being aggressive. And in one study, we even found they will go ahead and cheat on a test if doing so gives them higher status. So we put people in this situation where they have to complete a puzzle task and then they have to tell a partner how well they did on the task. But they first find out how the partner did. And the partner did really well, far better than they did. And what we find is that people who are high in hubristic pride will at that point lie about their own score. They will make it better than it actually was because they're so concerned about status and how they look to others. They'll do what it takes to maintain face, essentially.
- [31:10]
Shankar Vedantam
You also ran an experiment where you had volunteers play the role of judges and you presented them with an unusual scenario. And also then induced authentic or hubristic pride. Tell me about the study and what you found.
- [31:22]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, so we gave them a crime that's sort of a victimless crime. It was prostitution, which is illegal in most states, most provinces and Canada. But of course it's unclear that there's a victim here. And so you could see a situation where people really want to go kind of gently on, on the prostitute who's been arrested. And what we found is that that is the case. But when people were first manipulated to feel hubristic pride, they were much harsher, so much more punitive.
- [31:47]
Shankar Vedantam
What do you think that is saying?
- [31:50]
Jessica Tracy
I think that when people feel hubristic pride, they become motivated to make themselves better than others in any way that they can. Right. They, they want to demonstrate their superiority and this is one way of doing it. Right. It's sort of an easy target. Go after people who are weaker than you, who seem different than you, and attack them. And then you feel good about yourself.
- [32:21]
Shankar Vedantam
When we come back, how to harness the power of authentic pride. You're listening to Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. Apple Card is the perfect card for your holiday shopping. When you use Apple Card on your iPhone, you'll earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, including products at Apple like a new iPhone 16 or Apple Watch Ultra. Apply now in the wallet app on your iPhone subject to credit approval. Apple card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at applecard.com Support for Hidden Brain comes from SimpliSafe. If you're ever worried about the safety of your home and family, there's no better time to act right now. You can get 60% off today just by visiting simplisafe.com brain SimpliSafe is a new way to protect your home that stops intruders before they break into your home. Simplisafe's active Guard outdoor protection changes the game by preventing crime before it even happens. There are no long term contracts, no cancellation fees and it's around $1 a day. For all this protection, SimpliSafe is offering our listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale this week. Only you can get 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. This is their best offer of the year. Head to simplisafe.com brain that's simplisafe.com brain there's no safe like simplisafe. This is hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Jessica Tracy is a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. She's the author of the Secret of Success. She argues that when we see the emotion of pride only as a negative thing, we miss out on all the powerful ways pride can also be a driver of determination, sacrifice, and pro social behavior. In your book, Jessica, you write about a very interesting study of how the experience of pride affected people who are trying to lose weight on a diet. Tell me about that study.
- [34:53]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, this is a cool study by Will Hoffman and colleagues. They basically had a sample of Germans who were trying to resist various temptations, like eating a delicious piece of chocolate cake when they were on a diet. And we all know this is really challenging. I think everyone's been there at some point and what they've found is that when those people were told, hey, next time you want to eat that chocolate cake before you do, remember how much pride you felt last time you resisted temptation. And so the people would do this. And it actually worked. Right? The people who actually reported feeling more pride the last time they resisted temptation were better able to resist temptation next time. It's kind of amazing. It's such a sort of easy shortcut, but it does actually work.
- [35:45]
Shankar Vedantam
You also say that when we do something we are not proud of, when perhaps we feel shame about how we've acted, a desire to feel pride again can motivate us to make amends. Now this doesn't have to be about, you know, making earth shattering discoveries. It can be about the pride we take in being a good friend or a good parent. I understand that you have some experience with this also as a parent.
- [36:06]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, absolutely. Hopefully this is something every parent can identify with. But we all have those moments, I certainly do, where we take our own stuff out on our kid and then feel horrible about it. For me, this happened some years ago. My daughter was 11 and I was going through a hard time. And you know, there was one day where I forget what happened, but something had happened that I was in a particularly bad place emotionally and I had to take her to softball practice. And you know, she, as 11 year olds do, was not ready on time and took too long getting her shoes on. And so we were running late and I lashed out at her, you know, I said something like, you really need to get your act together. Or you know, this is, you've got to, you know, you're 11 now, you got to be more responsible, get your stuff together. And she's the kind of kid who just takes all that and just like internalizes it completely, you know. And so I immediately felt. She felt horrible, I felt horrible. It was probably the worst car ride to softball practice we've ever had. She then I drop her at the practice, and I spend the next hour feeling awful, you know, feeling like, ugh, I just made her feel so bad. She didn't do anything wrong. You know, this is my own stuff. I hope she has a good practice, you know, just really kind of ruminating about it. And so as soon as I pick her up, I say to her, okay, I want to talk about what happened before I got mad at you, but you didn't deserve it at all. I was in a really bad place emotionally, and I took it out on you, and that wasn't cool. And I'm really sorry, and I'm gonna really try not to do that. And it's okay for you to be mad at me when I do that. And why don't we go and, like, get cookies at a. At a, you know, bakery on the way home? And, you know, I feel really good about that because that's kind of the best you can do. You know, I think what's. What often happens when these shaming moments happen is you just push it away. Right? I'm never gonna think about it again. She and I will never talk about it. I'll pick her up and ask her about practice and pretend it never happened. But by doing this instead, by actually openly talking about it. Obviously, by the end of practice, I don't know if she still remembered. But it wasn't for she wanted to tell me how the practice went. She didn't want to talk about it. Even when I brought up the apology, she didn't want to talk about it because, you know, 11 year olds are not psyched to talk about emotional stuff. But I think it's really good that we did because it sent her the message that she's not wrong to be upset with me. Right? That. That whatever hurt she was feeling is not on her. That. That, you know, she's right if she's feeling like that was unfair. And I think it sends the message that. But, hey, we all make mistakes, and that's okay. And apologizing is really important. And now that she's a teenager, it's much more often to go the other way. I don't know. Teenagers, I think at least 50% of the time come home and are basically jerks to their parents. You know, don't talk to me. And my daughter's great about this. Like, she's now at a point where she can say, I just can't talk to you for the first hour. I'M home. And then we'll talk later. So cool. Fine. Most of the time, it does not bother me at all because I understand how teenagers work. But every now and then, she goes a little far. And there was one time recently where she said something and it actually kind of hurt. And I ended up telling her that, and she was great. You know, she sent me a text a little while after and just said, hey, I'm really sorry. And I know that's really hard for her to do, but I think setting the example and showing her, if you do that, it really makes a difference, you know, I immediately was like, of course I forgive you. Don't worry about it. You know, and it really allows you to kind of go on and reinstate that great relationship without having the burden of, oh, there's this thing I did that I feel really bad about and I can't talk about.
- [39:38]
Shankar Vedantam
What is the connection here with authentic pride?
- [39:41]
Jessica Tracy
So I think it's changing a shame experience into an authentic pride experience. Right. I could. You know, knowing me, I tend to really linger on shame things. And so had I not turned that around at the softball practice, I probably would have spent years. Probably even to this point, I would still feel bad about that time. I lashed out at her before softball, you know, I mean, hopefully not, but I could see it. And instead, if I think about that moment, I think about her little face, you know, when I. When I got mad at her. And that makes me sad. But then I immediately also think, but wait a minute, I fixed it. I feel good about the way that I handle it. That was actually like, a good parenting moment. I turn a really bad parenting moment into a pretty good parenting moment, and that does make me feel authentic pride in my parenting ability.
- [40:32]
Shankar Vedantam
There's an important wrinkle here, which is that the culture and the context that you're in also makes a huge difference. Can you talk about that? Which is that as we express our pride, it's important to pay attention to the context and the culture in which we're in. Speaking about yourself and your achievements in Canada might be different than speaking about your achievements in the United States or in Pakistan.
- [40:53]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, no, I think that's really important, and there's all kinds of interesting cultural reasons for this. I think that a lot of the way that cultures balance their different norms around status and hierarchy is by putting different values on hubristic and authentic pride. But, yeah, I think practically speaking, what it means is you need to be really attuned to the context you're in when you Express pride. Be really aware of where you are. There are places in America where it is perfectly acceptable to brag about your achievements, where bragging about your achievements can even say, help you get elected president. But, you know, in Canada, for the most part, that doesn't fly. Canadians are much more humble. The norms are very different. And then to get even more extreme, there's this great story of the Kalahari Bushman. In that society, bragging is completely unacceptable. Even just talking about a success is unacceptable. And so an anthropologist there told a story about a hunter he had met. And the hunter said that after he had a big hunt, he would go home, go back to the village and kind of just sit alone. He wouldn't mention it to anyone, and he would wait for someone to approach him. And when the person approached him and said, oh, how'd it go today? He would say, oh, you know, not that well. I didn't really see a whole lot. And what that would actually do is tell the friend who'd asked him that he'd had a big success. Right, because that's what you do. You. You sort of force the person to pull it out of you. The friend would then say, oh, come on, you must have found something. And then eventually it would come out that he'd had the success. If he had gone back and said, oh, my God, I had this big kill, it's so exciting, that would have been a really bad move. It would have made everyone see him as arrogant, as violating the social norms. And because these societies are very strictly organized against any strong hierarchy, any kind of hubristic pride is really tamped down.
- [42:40]
Shankar Vedantam
You know, I remember hearing the story. I don't know if it's apocryphal, but some years ago, the Canadian national team, I think, was playing someone else, and this might have been in hockey. And the Canadian team was up. And. And they were up, like, four goals to nothing. And I think they scored an extra goal or another couple of goals, and people got really mad at them in Canada, saying, you're up 4 0. Why in the world would you want to make that 6 0? And of course, in the United States, that would be completely unremarkable. They would say, why didn't you go to 8 0?
- [43:08]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah. I mean, it's interesting that I've been here so long that when you say in the US they would go to 8 0, I'm like, oh, that's terrible. I really internalize those values. Yeah. My daughter's team. When one team is more than five goals ahead of the other, they stop putting them on the board. Um, they just stop counting them. Now the kids keep counting them. Let me be clear. There's no question at the end of the game how many goals were actually scored. But, yeah, that's. That's very. Don't. Don't rub it in. You know, you've won, you've made your point. You know, don't make the other guy feel bad. Don't. Don't hold it over their head is kind of the attitude here. Yeah.
- [43:43]
Shankar Vedantam
So unwarranted or exaggerated displays of pride can carry social costs, as you've mentioned. I want to play for you a bit of tape from the Oscars in 1998. This is tape of the director, James Cameron, who is accepting his Oscar for the movie Titanic. There's no way that I can express.
- [44:04]
Jessica Tracy
To you what I'm feeling right now. My heart is full to bursting, except to say I'm the king of the world. Yeah, it's funny. Even. Even now I'm like, o, I can't believe you did that. You know, obviously he's riffing on his own line that he wrote in the Titanic. That's what Leonardo DiCaprio says in a very charming line in the movie. Very charming. When Leonardo DiCaprio says it. Not so charming. I would argue, when James Cameron says it after winning a major award, you know, it's sort of like, why do you have to go there? And I'm sure that, you know, the interesting thing about that quote is he has this plausible deniability. If someone says, wow, that sounded really arrogant, his response, I'm sure, would be, oh, I was just quoting my movie. I'm being silly, of course. I don't think I'm the king of the world. But it's sort of like, well, number one, you wrote that line in the movie. Like, it's not like you're, you know, paying homage to some other movie. You're paying homage to your own movie, which already is a little bit arrogant. But then, you know, it's sort of an excuse to allow you to say this thing that your hubristic side really wants to say. Right. I mean, that's really what it is. It's sort of like, I can't help but point out, I am the best, which is just such an extreme statement of arrogance. And my memory of that is that even among Americans, that was considered a little over the top.
- [45:31]
Shankar Vedantam
You say that one way we can channel our pride in ways that other people won't find obnoxious is to focus our Pride in realms that will not threaten other people. People. I understand that you have a particular pride in your ability to parallel park.
- [45:48]
Jessica Tracy
I love it that you mentioned that. That shows how much pride I have in it, that I'm like, yes, I get to talk about this. Yeah, this is something, you know, I'm just really good at parallel parking. And you can hear in my voice. I can't help but feel hubristic pride of it. It's a skill. I don't exactly know why I have it, except that my dad made me practice it a million times before my test when I was 16. But that was like a million years ago, so, I don't know. It stuck me. But, yeah, I feel really good about it. And I think, you know, probably because I'm not, like, an athlete, I'm not particularly known for my hand eye coordination. So it's not something that fits into the rest of my life at all. It's not a domain in which I get any status off of at all. And yet it makes me feel really good about myself. I used to make my daughter call me the Shoehorn. If I was getting into a small spot when she was little, I'd say, harper, what do you think? What do you think's going on here? And she'd say, this is a job for Shoehorn. I'd say, that's right. My Instagram handle is shoehorn74. So, you know, I really. It's part of my identity. But you know what I think is nice about it is. Yeah, it feels great. Like, there are ways in which. When I get into. I just did it the other day. I got to a spot that was tiny. I was lit. I was like, did anyone see that? I don't think anyone did. Unfortunately, you kind of have this moment of gloating, and you feel this real hubristic sense, like, wow, I am better than other people at this. And because it's in a domain that does not matter at all for my life, right. I don't live in a neighborhood where it's particularly hard to park. I. I rarely get to show off this skill, and even if I did, it wouldn't matter for my career, my life. You know, there's no way in which this actually matters. So it's a safe domain to feel hubristic pride, and I think that's really important. Right. If I felt hubristic pride in my work, that would be really problematic because I am surrounded all the time by people who do what I do. And when we feel hubristic pride, In a domain where our coworkers, our colleagues, our friends are existing in the same world, it can make people feel really bad, right? They don't like it. They feel competitive, they feel jealous. And in essence, what you're saying is, I am better than you at this thing we both care about. And that's not a nice thing to say. It's not a thing that's going to help your social relationships. But if I say to my partner, I'm better at you than parallel parking, you know, she's fine with that, so it's okay.
- [48:10]
Shankar Vedantam
You talked earlier, Jessica, about how authentic pride can sometimes become hubristic pride. And in your book, you give the example of the cyclist Lance Armstrong.
- [48:21]
Jessica Tracy
Yeah, Lance Armstrong, of course, I think we all know his story a little bit, but it is a really interesting one to think about in this context. You know, he grew up kind of poor family in Texas, and wanted to get out of this small town that he lived in. And he saw a way out through cycling. He was really into cycling when he was a kid, and by the time he was a teenager, he was biking all the time. You know, after school, all the other kids would go play or, you know, go swimming or whatever. He would be on his bike. He would bike up to 20 miles a day, sometimes 40. And he started entering in these competitions, triathlons and cycling races, and started winning money. And by the time he was, like, 16, he was winning a lot of money, bringing home something like $20,000 a year for his family, helping support his family through cycling. So this became a huge source of pride for him. Right. It was something that he could do that was about the hard work that he put in himself, and it made a real difference, and it made people look up to him. He must have felt tremendous authentic pride from that experience. And, of course, that carried on. He continued working his butt off cycling all the time to eventually become one of the fastest cyclists in the world, winning seven Tour de France races. No one's ever won that many races. And after his seventh, I think it was kind of a unanimous decision that caused the entire cycling community that he was the best, that there was no one else like Lance Armstrong. And he wasn't just a good cyclist. He was a good person. He used his earnings to start this foundation, the Livestrong foundation, that raised money and awareness for cancer. And he was a cancer survivor and very open about being a cancer survivor. And his foundation was so successful, and partly because of his charisma, his own success, his activist abilities, and his cycling abilities, that people everywhere loved him, loved the foundation. Everyone wore those yellow bracelets that you don't see anymore, but you did see all the time for a period. I mean, he was a real success story until, of course, we found out that he had been cheating. He'd been using blood doping, so that essentially he kind of did the impossible, right? He won without having it mean anything for his actual ability. Right? Usually when we work hard, we win. The reason that feels good is because it tells us, hey, I'm great. I just did something that was really important to me, and I succeeded. That means I am that person I want to be. But if you're cheating, you can't get that message, right? If you're cheating your way to get ahead, you can win and actually have no idea whether you're the best. Other people think you're the best, but you don't know if you actually are. And so that's kind of what happened to Lance. The fame and fortune and praise that he got from others became more important to him than his own feeling of, I'm doing this thing that's so important to me, that's making me the kind of person I want to be. And when that gets dissociated, when the desire to get praise and love and attention from others gets separated from the desire to feel good about yourself internally, that's where people can engage in things like cheapness.
- [51:14]
Shankar Vedantam
I mean, in some ways, the journey you're talking about here is the difference between focusing on an accomplishment versus focusing on others. Recognizing your accomplishment.
- [51:25]
Jessica Tracy
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And it's like I said before, it's easy to do, right? You have a big accomplishment. The first thing, you know, you feel this incredible surge of pride. The first thing that we all want to feel is, how do I make this bigger? How do I keep this going? And the easiest way to do that is to tell other people. People, right? Get praise from others. And that is the critical decision moment, right? I would say for everyone, that is the moment where you need to stop, pause, and think about what your goal is, right? Because if your goal is to just kind of get more and more praise, then you're going to veer into hubristic pride. You're going to start thinking more about what others think instead of what you think, right? If your goal is, hey, this is a great moment for me, I want to share it with my partner. I want to share it with my family, I think that's great. You know, I think those are the people that you can share it with. They're not going to judge you for being arrogant. It's not the same as publicizing it to the world. And I think that's probably where the limit is. As soon as you decide to post it on Facebook or Twitter or whatever social media, that's where you're crossing a line potentially. Right? Because you can very easily veer into this world that Lance Armstrong veered into, where others views become more important than your own.
- [52:44]
Shankar Vedantam
Jessica Tracy is a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. She's the author of the Secret of Success. Jessica, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain.
- [52:55]
Jessica Tracy
Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's been really fun.
- [53:05]
Shankar Vedantam
Do you have follow up questions about Pride for Jessica Tracy? If you'd be willing to share your question with a Hidden Brain audience, please find a quiet space and record a voice memo on your phone. You can email it to us@ideasiddenbrain.org that email address again is ideasiddenbrain.org Next week in our Emotions 2.0 series, the emotional complexities of mixed Feelings, we explore how ambivalence helps us deal with challenging situations and how it can shape our minds.
- [53:39]
Jessica Tracy
We've done some research recently where we've shown that feeling emotional ambivalence makes you more cognitively flexible. And what I mean by that is that you not only think about concepts in a more broad and inclusive way, you'll actually process information in a more cognitively flexible manner.
- [54:04]
Shankar Vedantam
Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy, Paul Kristen Wong, Laura Kwerel, Ryan Katz, Autumn Barnes, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. Tara Boyle is our Executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's Executive Editor. If you missed our kickoff episode in our Emotions 2.0 series, you can find it in this podcast feed. It's called emotions 2.0 when I feel what you feel. And if you know someone who might enjoy the episodes in this series, we'd love for you to share them. Your recommendations really play a huge role in helping us connect new listeners to the ideas we explore on Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. See you soon.
- [55:10]
Jessica Tracy
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Shankar Vedantam
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Jessica Tracy
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Shankar Vedantam
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