JESSICA L. TRACY
Associate professor of psychology, University of British Columbia
I worry about the recent epidemic of lying and cheating that has infected public discourse in diverse domains. Think of science writer Jonah Lehrer’s fabrication of quotes in his 2012 book, Imagine: How Creativity Works—which was subsequently pulled from shelves by its publisher. Or social psychologist Diederik Stapel’s fabrication of empirical data reported in more than fifty published articles—most of them eventually retracted by the journals. Or Lance Armstrong’s years of competitive cycling powered by illegal doping, resulting in the removal of his seven Tour de France victories and a lifetime banishment from the sport.
These problematic behaviors resulted either from a technological advance or a shift in the social climate. The current mass appeal of social psychology and social-science literature created a high payoff for smart and creative people like Lehrer and Stapel, who were able to attain a level of fame from writing social science—a level until recently inconceivable. Armstrong was lucky (or unlucky) enough to come of age in cycling at the time when blood-doping technology became largely undetectable. But changes like these are only the proximate causes of the epidemic. There is a broader, deeper psychological cause, and it is far from recent; it has been part of human nature throughout our evolutionary history. The psychological mechanism motivating and facilitating these corrupt behaviors is hubristic pride—the arrogance and egotism that drive people to brag, lie, cheat, and bully others to get ahead.
Hubristic pride is distinct from the confident authentic pride we feel in well-earned achievements. While authentic pride motivates hard work, persistence, and empathic concern for others, hubristic pride motivates hostility, aggression, intimidation, and prejudice. And this makes sense, because feeling hubristically proud does not mean feeling genuinely good about oneself. Instead, it involves inflated, inauthentic, and superficial feelings of grandiosity, which are used strategically and defensively to compensate for deep-seated, often unconscious insecurities. The hubristically proud are narcissistic but have low self-esteem and are prone to shame. Arrogance is how they cope with, and hide, their suppressed self-doubts. And because any kind of pride feels better than shame, those who feel hubristic pride seek to maintain it at any cost—finding new ways of promoting themselves and derogating others. Like a drug, hubristic pride makes getting ahead feel essential, as the only way to keep insecurities at bay. But the insecurities occasionally bubble up to the surface of awareness, reminding the hubristically pride-prone that they are not good enough, smart enough, or fast enough and leaving them with no option but to go beyond what they can achieve on their own. They use force, aggression, lying, and cheating to maintain the power and pride they have come to depend on. And hubristic pride convinces them they can get away with it.
The evolution of hubristic pride, which underlies the universal human motivation to climb the social hierarchy, is nothing new. What is new is that the bullies who feel it have a bully pulpit. Lehrer and Stapel were not the first writers or scientists to seek fame, but they were working in a new climate, where science and science writing are a means of attaining fame. As for Armstrong, by coming back from a near fatal cancer to win the world’s most difficult race seven times, he became the first professional cyclist to achieve the name recognition of a movie star.
What is the solution to my worry? Ideally, institutions will develop better ways to catch liars and cheaters and enforce more severe penalties against them, so that the risk-to-payoff balance tilts in the other direction. But there may be another solution. We cannot stop people from feeling hubristic pride; it’s part of our human nature, and given that power provides financial and reproductive benefits, it is evolutionarily adaptive. But we can become alert to its presence and pitfalls and catch it earlier. Arrogance is obvious, and research in my lab has found that people quickly and accurately identify the most dominant members of their social group—the ones likely to feel the most hubristic pride. What’s difficult is avoiding falling prey to their manipulative influence and calling them out instead. Is that even possible? Perhaps, but only if we start questioning the success stories that seem too good to be true. This means sacrificing the collective pride we feel in the apparent accomplishments (and even the arrogance) of our cultural heroes. By enabling others’ arrogance, we nurture the pride that can lead to large-scale deception and even crime and further increase the gap between true accomplishments and just rewards.