PART II – Evidence For The Universal Expression of Pride
The Experiment
To test the universal nature of pride display the researchers set up a cross-cultural experiment.
In order to do so, they sought a relatively small-scale isolated village community located in Fiji and compared their results to undergraduate students in North America. The Fijian community was selected specifically because overt displays of pride are suppressed due to cultural norms.
“We predicted that if pride displays evolved to communicate high status, these displays should be automatically associated with high-status concepts even among individuals who possess cultural rules prohibiting overt status displays, such as Fijians.”
The research entailed a battery of test in both groups.
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Results Of The Pride Experiment
The results showed that nonverbal pride is an adaptive expression for communicating high status, even in Fijians. Happy, pride, neutral and shame expressions were also highly similar across the Fijian and North American populations. “In both populations pride displays are more strongly implicitly associated with high status than are shame and neutral displays and equally or more strongly than happy displays.”
Interestingly, Fijians judged happy display as conveying higher status than did subjects in North American demonstrating a cultural difference. This may be the case because displays of pride are not culturally permitted amongst the Fijian, but instead, people are encouraged to display in other more open ways. Happiness and smiling might serve to replace the display of pride.
According to the authors, one way humans throughout history might have controlled the expression of pride – once it was reliably correlated with status, such as arrogance, was to actively punish it if it couldn’t be back up implicitly. In other words, pride that was not gained through merit, but was instead a hollow display, could be met with verbal confrontation at best or at worst a physical attack from a rival who gained pride through success and was therefore able to back up his nonverbal expression with real world strength.
“By invoking social norms that punish individuals who appear overly arrogant by virtue of displaying pride, these cultures may effectively reduce rivalries and status conflicts that would occur frequently if individuals felt unconstrained from displaying an expression that communicated their belief in their deservedness of status, regardless of whether a status gain was in fact deserved.”
Conclusions
The authors note that while it is possible that the pride posture was transferable from the West to Fijians, it is quite unlikely. In fact, since pride is explicitly discouraged, the reverse is actually more likely – that pride is universally driven and culturally reinforced or in the case of Fiji culturally diminished (yet still persistent).
It is suggested that the pride display forms an integral part of human psychology. That is, we are wired to accept pride body language and react to it appropriately. While the posture of pride can be faked, we are likely programmed to respond to it as if it is earned – as throughout our evolution, pride delivered nonverbally would have been met with vigorous punishment.
While some of our ancestors would have tried to “fake it until they made it,” others would have succumbed to social pressure. The faker, having met a challenge from another who actually earned it, would have been quickly ousted. This would quickly diminish pride “fakery” in a wider context.
How To Use It
That has implications today because it indicates that people likely have psychological priming that encourages them to see pride displays as an accurate reflection of reality. In other words, people who display pride, have earned it and we should respect them.
This isn’t much different than any other nonverbal expression. Faking it, can produce desired feelings in others – at least in the short term. In the long-term, it is likely that actually “making-it” will become more important.
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Resources
Carney, D. R., Cuddy, A. J. C., & Yap, A. J. Power Posing: Brief Nonverbal Displays Affect Neuroendocrine Levels And Risk Tolerance. Psychological Science. 2019; 21, 1363-1368.
Jessica L. Tracy; Azim F. Shariff; Wanying Zhao and Joseph Henrich. Cross-Cultural Evidence That the Nonverbal Expression of Pride Is An Automatic Status. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2019; 142 (1): 163-180.
Weisfeld, G. E., & Beresford, J. M. Erectness Of Posture As An Indicator Of Dominance Or Success In Humans. Motivation and Emotion. 1982; 6: 113-131.
Williams, L. A., & Desteno, D. Pride: Adaptive Social Emotion Or Seventh Sin? Psychological Science. 2019. 20: 284-288.
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