The Quest for (Eliciting) Hubristic Pride: Nomological Shockwaves/ Networks, Attributions, and Social Desirability Across Different Experimental Manipulations

Pride is a complex emotion. According to Tracy and Robins' two-facet theory of pride, authentic pride arises when success originates from unstable attributions (e.g., effort), and hubristic pride arises when success originates from stable attributions (e.g., talent). Yet, controversy persists about the validity of hubristic pride. Our research compared diverse experimental methods to assess the construct validity of both facets of pride. Study 1 (n = 329) asked participants to recall pride inducing episodes with explicit encouragement to feel target emotions. Study 2 (n = 177) presented participants with positive feedback on interpersonal perception based on unstable vs. stable characteristics of participants' competency. Study 3 (n = 328) and Study 4 (n = 107) presented participants with feedback of high leadership aptitude based on prestige vs. dominance quality and asked them to predict others' responses to the same feedback. A mini meta-analysis estimated that hubristic-pride manipulations were generally successful relative to authentic-pride manipulations in inducing hubristic pride with minimal intensity. However, authentic pride was far more salient than hubristic pride across all conditions and manipulations. Study 3 and 4 illuminated participants' apprehension in reporting hubristic pride, when they expected others to experience greater hubristic pride, corroborating the low frequency of hubristic pride across all studies. Analyses of nomological networks revealed that authentic pride clearly covaried with positive affect, while hubristic pride covaried more strongly with negative affect (e.g., hostility and shame) than with positive affect. Analyses of nomological shockwaves highlighted the difficulty of observing intense levels of hubristic pride in people's experience of success. Our findings pose novel challenges to the two-facet theory of pride: (1) hubristic pride may not be a discrete emotion of pride; and (2) a single-facet model of pride still stands as a fruitful model, until pending evidence otherwise supports the two-facet theory of pride.