Conscientiousness and Two Facets of Pride

This line of research, led by Aaron Weidman, is examining the interplay between trait conscientiousness and two forms of pride (i.e., authentic and hubristic) in promoting adaptive outcomes like increased effort, achievement, and self-promotion. Psychologists have recently discovered that pride motivates persistence in achievement domains (Williams & DeSteno, 2008) and communicates one’s status to others (Williams & DeSteno, 2009; Shariff & Tracy, 2009; see Tracy, Shariff, & Cheng, 2010, for an overview). Similarly, researchers have long known that conscientious people work hard in achievement domains and achieve occupational status (see Roberts, Jackson, Fayard, Edmonds, & Meints, 2009). Together, these two findings suggest that pride may play an important role in guiding conscientious individuals’ achievement-oriented behavior.  A broader goal of this line of work is to better understand the evolutionary origins of core personality traits (i.e., the Big Five). Identifying the emotional action tendencies that characterize major traits will play an important role in this research.