Can pride be a vice and virtue at work? Associations between authentic and hubristic pride and leadership behaviors

• Published date: 01 July 2019
• Author: Edward Yeung,Winny Shen
• Date: 01 July 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.2352

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Can pride be a vice and virtue at work? Associations between

authentic and hubristic pride and leadership behaviors

Edward Yeung |Winny Shen

Department of Psychology, University of

Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Correspondence

Edward Yeung, Department of Psychology,

University of Waterloo, 200 University

Avenue West, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 3G1,

Canada.

Email: egmyeung@uwaterloo.ca

Funding information

Social Sciences and Humanities Research

Council of Canada, Grant/Award Number:

435‐2016‐0696

Summary

Pride, a discrete emotion that drives the pursuits of achievement and status, is crucial to

consider in leadership contexts. Across three studies, we explored how leaders' experi-

ences of authentic and hubristic pride were associated with their leadership behaviors.

In Study 1, a field study of leader–follower dyads, leader trait authentic pride was asso-

ciated with the use of more effective (i.e., consideration and initiating structure) and

fewer ineffective (i.e., abusive supervision) leadership behaviors, and hubristic pride

was associated with more abusive behaviors. In Study 2, a daily diary study, on days

when leaders experienced more authentic pride than usual, they used more effective

leadership behaviors than usual, whereas on days when leaders experienced more

hubristic pride than typical, they were more likely to engage in abusive supervision than

typical. In Study 3, a scenario‐based experiment, leaders who experienced more

authentic pride in response to our experimental manipulation were more likely to

intend to use effective leadership behaviors. In contrast, those who experienced more

hubristic pride were less likely to use these behaviors and more likely to intend to be

abusive. Overall, this work highlights the importance of pride for leadership processes

and the utility of examining discrete and self‐conscious emotions within organizations.

KEYWORDS

affect, authentic pride, emotions, hubristic pride, leadership behaviors

1|INTRODUCTION

Regardless of leadership theory or perspective, scholars agree that

emotions and leadership are inseparably intertwined (Gooty, Connelly,

Griffith, & Gupta, 2010). Specifically, the affective experience of pride,

which fuels the fundamental human pursuits of achievement, power,

and social status, appears to be closely conceptually tied to the pursuit

of leadership and effectiveness as a leader. However, limited research

has explored the impact of pride on leadership processes; rather,

extant research has focused on generalized affect (i.e., positive or neg-

ative affect; Joseph, Dhanani, Shen, McHugh, & McCord, 2015). Thus,

there exists a critical gap in the literature, as pride has been theorized

and shown to possess unique motivational and behavioral conse-

quences beyond generalized affect (e.g., Cheng, Tracy, & Henrich,

2010; Hu & Kaplan, 2015; Williams & DeSteno, 2008). The purpose

and contribution of the current research to the literature is to explore

the relationship between pride and leadership behaviors.

Pride is among a class of emotions known as self‐conscious emo-

tions (along with shame, guilt, and embarrassment), which differ from

basic emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness, and anger) in that they involve

complex appraisals of the self, as well as of how others view the self

(Lewis, Haviland‐Jones, & Barrett, 2008). Unlike basic emotions, self‐

conscious emotions are theorized to have evolved in humans specifi-

cally for the purpose of regulating social behavior and relationships

------------------------------------------------------- -- --- -- -- --- -- --- -- -- --- -- --- -- -- --- -- --- -- -- --- -- --- -- --- -- -- --- -- --- -- -

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided

the original work is properly cited.

© 2019 The Authors Journal of Organizational Behavior Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Received: 2 August 2017 Revised: 22 November 2018 Accepted: 6 January 2019

DOI: 10.1002/job.2352

J Organ Behav. 2019;40:605–624. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 605

(e.g., Baumeister, Stillwell, & Heatherton, 1994; Beer, Heerey, Keltner,

Scabini, & Knight, 2003; Niedenthal, Tangney, & Gavanski, 1994;

Tangney & Fischer, 1995). Although scholars recognize the importance

of emotions to leadership, existing research in leadership contexts has

generally failed to examine the role of self‐conscious emotions. Instead,

leadership research has primarily focused on generalized affect (e.g.,

positive affect) or, more rarely, on basic discrete emotions (e.g., anger

and sadness, Madera & Smith, 2009; happiness and sadness, Visser,

van Knippenberg, van Kleef, & Wisse, 2013). Given that leadership is

asocial influence process involving relationships and social exchanges

between leaders and followers (e.g., Bass, 1990), self‐conscious emo-

tions, such as pride, may be critical to consider in a leadership context.

Pride, in particular, may be one of the most important human

emotions for social behavior, as pride initiates and drives action

towards the attainment of social status and socially valued achieve-

ments (Tracy & Robins, 2007a). Researchers have uncovered two

types of pride, authentic and hubristic, theorized to motivate distinct

behavioral strategies in pursuit of these ends. Specifically, authentic

pride (e.g., feeling “accomplished”and “successful”) promotes the

attainment of status based on expertise or legitimate achievement,

whereas hubristic pride (e.g., feeling “arrogant”and “conceited”) pro-

motes attainment of status through intimidation (Cheng et al., 2010).

Thus, through their differing impacts on social behaviors, including

those associated with status, each type of pride may be differentially

associated with leadership outcomes.

Prior research in the lab is suggestive that pride may have partic-

ular importance for leadership. Individuals associate expressions of

both authentic and hubristic pride with high status (Shariff & Tracy,

2009; Tiedens, Ellsworth, & Mesquita, 2000), and nonverbal expres-

sions of pride communicate to observers that the expresser is agentic

(i.e., forceful, assertive, and confident; Brosi, Spörrle, Welpe, &

Heilman, 2016). In addition, individuals who are induced to feel pride

display dominant behaviors and are perceived by others as more influ-

ential (Williams & DeSteno, 2009). These behaviors and perceptions

related to status may encourage others to view those who display

pride as “leader‐like”and as possessing intrinsic leadership ability

(Hogg, 2001). However, given evidence that the context in which

emotions occur (i.e., lab vs. field) can dramatically alter effects (e.g.,

Gooty, Gavin, & Ashkanasy, 2009; Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996), there

is a strong need for studies examining the impact of pride in field or

organizational settings. Further, extant pride studies have focused pri-

marily on its implications for leadership emergence rather than its

potential impact on individuals once they come to occupy these lead-

ership positions. Thus, we also contribute to the literature by examin-

ing whether pride is related to the behaviors of organizational leaders.

In the current research, we focus on the behavioral implications of

leader pride. Specifically, we investigate how experiences of pride at

work may shape leaders' behaviors towards their followers. Although

it is recognized that the experience of each discrete emotion should

have unique behavioral implications (Gooty et al., 2009; Weiss &

Cropanzano, 1996), scholars have not identified which leadership

behaviors would be motivated by pride and whether these relation-

ships would differ by type of pride (i.e., authentic or hubristic). There-

fore, we seek to integrate the accumulated research on pride rooted

in evolutionary psychology with the leadership literature in the

organizational sciences to generate hypotheses regarding relationships

between leader pride and different types of leadership behaviors.

Our work makes two major contributions tothe literature. First, we

expand the leadership and emotions literature by answering calls to

investigate the role of discrete emotions in organizations, a topic that

has traditionally been neglected in favor of generalized affect (Brief &

Weiss, 2002; Gooty et al., 2009). When it comes to understanding

workplace behaviors, discrete emotions are critical as they represent

functionally distinct responses that energize and promote unique sets

of behavior (e.g., pride and gratitude should lead to different behavioral

reactions; Roseman, Wiest, & Swartz, 1994). By focusing on pride, we

sought to enhance our understanding of the important role discrete

emotions, particularly self‐conscious emotions, may play in leadership

processes and enhance our ability to predict leadership behaviors.

Second, we challenge the assumption that positive emotions result

in universally positive outcomes in organizations (e.g., Lindebaum &

Jordan, 2012). Prior theory and research have typically highlighted

the benefits of experiencing subjectively pleasant emotions (i.e., the

Broaden‐and‐Build Theory of Positive Emotions, Fredrickson, 2001).

For example, leader positive affect has been linked to a host of benefi-

cial organizational outcomes, including lower turnover, higher levels of

job satisfaction, and greater positive affect among individual followers,

as well as greater group effort and cooperation and lower group conflict

(e.g., Barsade, 2002; Gaddis, Connelly, & Mumford, 2004; George &

Bettenhausen, 1990; Rubin, Munz, & Bommer, 2005; Sy, Côté, &

Saavedra, 2005; Visser et al., 2013). In contrast, we theorize and aim

to demonstrate that the subjectively pleasant and positively valenced

emotion of hubristic pride may actually lead to negative workplace

outcomes, which we describe in greater detail below.

1.1 |Pride: A tale of two facets

Pride is a positive emotion that occurs when a socially desirable out-

come is achieved (Tracy & Robins, 2004). Therefore, two criteria must

be met to experience pride: (a) Individuals must believe that they are

responsible for the outcome, and (b) individuals must believe that

the outcome is socially desirable. The experience of pride provides

subjectively pleasant feelings of enhanced self‐satisfaction and self‐

worth (Izard, 1991).

Evidence indicates that authentic and hubristic pride are not dis-

tinguished by their precipitating events (Tracy & Robins, 2007b).

Rather, it is how an event is appraised that determines which type of

pride is experienced (Scherer, Schorr, & Johnstone, 2001). Authentic

pride is experienced when an individual attributes success to internal

and unstable causes, such as effort (Tracy & Robins, 2007b). Hubristic

pride is experienced when success is attributed to internal and stable

causes, such as innate ability or intelligence (Tracy & Robins, 2007b).

Importantly, the evidence suggests that authentic and hubristic pride

are distinct yet related emotions, rather than opposite ends of a single

continuum (Tracy & Robins, 2007b). Thus, individuals can experience

feelings of authentic and hubristic pride simultaneously (e.g., if they

appraise their success as due to both effort and innate ability).

Research from evolutionary psychology suggests that authentic

and hubristic pride evolved in humans as mechanisms for motivating

two distinct behavioral strategies—prestige and dominance—for

606 YEUNG AND SHEN