How does it feel to be greedy? The role of pride in avaricious acquisition.

BACKGROUND: Psychologists define greed as a desire to acquire more and the dissatisfaction of never having enough, but studies have not examined the psychological processes that underlie and sustain this disposition. We propose that a desire to attain pride might be one emotional mechanism that promotes greedy acquisition. In this account, greedy people experience a boost of pride from acquisition but these feelings are short-lived, potentially leading to the perpetual acquisitiveness characteristic of dispositional greed. METHOD: Four studies (including one reported in the SOM due to space limitations) using correlational, longitudinal, and daily-diary methods (N = 1778) test hypotheses about how individuals high in dispositional greed respond emotionally to new acquisitions, both when they occur and several weeks later. RESULTS: Greedy people experience heightened feelings of authentic pride in response to new acquisitions, but these feelings quickly fade. This pattern is distinct to authentic pride and not attributable to shared variance with positive affect. Greedy people also feel elevated hubristic pride in response to acquisitions, but this seems to be part of a dispositional tendency observed in response to a range of events. CONCLUSIONS: These studies provide a new understanding of a psychological process that is associated with, and could partially explain, greedy acquisition.

Beyond the fearful ape hypothesis: Humans are also supplicating and appeasing apes.

We review research suggesting that several of the functions attributed to fear, in the target article's fearful ape hypothesis, also apply to supplication and appeasement emotions. These emotions facilitate support provisioning from others and the formation and maintenance of cooperative relationships. We therefore propose that the fearful ape hypothesis be expanded to include several other distinctively human emotional tendencies.

The viability and validity of the Authentic and Hubristic Pride scales: Reply to Dickens and Murphy (2023).

Dickens and Murphy (see record 2023-63008-001) claim that the Authentic and Hubristic Pride (i.e., AP/HP) scales (see record 2007-02840-009), which we developed and validated over 15 years ago, do not validly assess the theoretical constructs of authentic and hubristic pride (e.g., Tracy & Robins, 2004a, 2007). These authors further call for the development of new measures based on a top-down approach, which would incorporate the theory into scale items. Although we appreciate Dickens and Murphy's emphasis on the need for valid assessment tools in this important research domain, we disagree with their conclusion that the extant scales are "fundamentally invalid." Here, we explain why a top-down approach would not be preferable to the bottom-up one we used and review the relatively large body of evidence supporting the validity of the extant AP/HP scales. Dickens and Murphy also raised several concerns regarding the HP scale specifically; most of these, as we explain, are either incorrect, exaggerated, or valid concerns but not ones that invalidate the HP scale. Nonetheless, we agree with Dickens and Murphy's suggestion that the AP/HP scales could be improved, and we echo their call for future research in this vein. Finally, we recommend that scholars seeking to advance the field in this way adopt the "living document" approach advocated by Gerasimova (2022). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Greed communication predicts the approval and reach of US senators' tweets.

Social media are at the forefront of modern political campaigning. They allow politicians to communicate directly with constituents and constituents to endorse politicians' messages and share them with their networks. Analyzing every tweet of all US senators holding office from 2013 to 2021 (861,104 tweets from 140 senators), we identify a psycholinguistic factor, greed communication, that robustly predicts increased approval (favorites) and reach (retweets). These effects persist when tested against diverse established psycholinguistic predictors of political content dissemination on social media and various other psycholinguistic variables. We further find that greed communication in the tweets of Democratic senators is associated with greater approval and retweeting compared to greed communication in the tweets of Republican senators, especially when those tweets also mention political outgroups.

Pride: The Emotional Foundation of Social Rank Attainment.

Pride is a self-conscious emotion, comprised of two distinct facets known as authentic and hubristic pride, and associated with a cross-culturally recognized nonverbal expression. Authentic pride involves feelings of accomplishment and confidence and promotes prosocial behaviors, whereas hubristic pride involves feelings of arrogance and conceit and promotes antisociality. Each facet of pride, we argue, contributes to a distinct means of attaining social rank: Authentic pride seems to promote prestige-a rank based on earned respect-whereas hubristic pride seems to promote dominance-a rank based on aggression and coercion. Both prestige and dominance are effective routes to power and influence in human groups, so both facets of pride are likely to be functional adaptations. Overall, the reviewed research suggests that pride is likely to be a human universal, critical for social relationships and rank attainment across human societies.

Leadership in the eye of the beholder: Follower self-esteem is associated with divergent perceptions of leadership ability for dominant and prestigious leaders.

OBJECTIVE: Drawing from dual-strategies theory, leader-member exchange theory, and several theories of self-esteem, we develop and test hypotheses about how followers' self-esteem predicts their perceptions of dominant and prestigious leaders' leadership ability. METHOD: Across four studies (N = 1568), we tested the association between self-esteem and perceptions of leadership ability for dominant and prestigious leaders. RESULTS: Individuals with high self-esteem perceived greater leadership ability in prestigious leaders than did those with low self-esteem and individuals with low self-esteem perceived greater leadership ability in dominant leaders than did those with high self-esteem. These results emerged across ratings of leaders from hypothetical vignettes (Studies 1 and 4), abstract beliefs about what constitutes good leadership (Study 1), past personal experiences with leaders (Study 2) and clips of leaders from reality television (Study 3). In Study 4, we also tested potential mechanisms. Compared with followers with low self-esteem, followers with high self-esteem found prestigious leaders more trustworthy, and they anticipated feeling inauthentic around a dominant leader. CONCLUSIONS: Self-esteem is reliably and robustly related to perceived leadership ability of dominant and prestigious leaders, and these differences might stem from differences in trust in prestigious leaders and anticipated authenticity around dominant leaders.

Warmth and competence perceptions of key protagonists are associated with containment measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from 35 countries.

It is crucial to understand why people comply with measures to contain viruses and their effects during pandemics. We provide evidence from 35 countries (Ntotal = 12,553) from 6 continents during the COVID-19 pandemic (between 2021 and 2022) obtained via cross-sectional surveys that the social perception of key protagonists on two basic dimensions-warmth and competence-plays a crucial role in shaping pandemic-related behaviors. Firstly, when asked in an open question format, heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were universally identified as key protagonists across countries. Secondly, multiple-group confirmatory factor analyses revealed that warmth and competence perceptions of these and other protagonists differed significantly within and between countries. Thirdly, internal meta-analyses showed that warmth and competence perceptions of heads of state, physicians, and protest movements were associated with support and opposition intentions, containment and prevention behaviors, as well as vaccination uptake. Our results have important implications for designing effective interventions to motivate desirable health outcomes and coping with future health crises and other global challenges.

The Chicken and Egg of Pride and Social Rank.

Prior research has found an association between pride experiences and social rank outcomes. However, the causal direction of this relationship remains unclear. The current research used a longitudinal design (N = 1,653) to investigate whether pride experiences are likely to be a cause, consequence, or both, of social rank outcomes, by tracking changes in individuals' pride and social rank over time. Prior research also has uncovered distinct correlational relationships between the two facets of pride, authentic and hubristic, and two forms of social rank, prestige and dominance, respectively. We therefore separately examined longitudinal relationships between each pride facet and each form of social rank. Results reveal distinct bidirectional relationships between authentic pride and prestige and hubristic pride and dominance, suggesting that specific kinds of pride experiences and specific forms of social rank are both an antecedent and a consequence of one another.

A paradox of pride: Hubristic pride predicts strategic dishonesty in response to status threats.

Numerous studies have shown that pride comprises two distinct facets: authentic pride, which is associated with achievement, high self-esteem, and prosocial personality traits; and hubristic pride, associated with arrogance, low self-esteem, and antisocial personality traits. Functionalist accounts suggest that both pride facets facilitate the attainment of social rank, raising the question of how the more antisocial and dysfunctional hubristic facet could increase one's social status. We propose that hubristically proud individuals use the antisocial behavior of dishonesty in a strategic and ultimately adaptive way, to gain status in response to experienced status threats. We tested this account in eight studies (seven of which were preregistered) by placing participants in a situation in which they encountered an opportunity to lie as a means of obtaining various social rewards (e.g., status, power). Findings show that hubristically proud participants engaged in dishonest behavior when faced with a status threat, but not when faced with the threat of a loss of power or generalized inferiority; these individuals also did not behave dishonestly in a nonsocial situation. We further found that the observed effects of hubristic pride on dishonesty were largely independent of shared variance with narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. These findings suggest that hubristic pride may engender a willingness to lie to get ahead, but only in situations where one's status has been threatened. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

How affect shapes status: distinct emotional experiences and expressions facilitate social hierarchy navigation.

All human societies are organized hierarchically, and individuals who occupy positions of high social rank typically acquire fitness advantages over lower ranking group members. Here, we argue that certain emotions function, at least in part, to help individuals successfully navigate these hierarchies. We review evidence suggesting that nine distinct emotions - pride, shame, anger, fear, sadness, disgust, contempt, envy, and admiration - influence social rank outcomes in important ways; most notably subjective experiences of these emotions motivate adaptive status-relevant behavior, and nonverbal expressions associated with these emotions send adaptive messages to others which facilitate expressers' attainment and maintenance of social rank. In sum, the reviewed emotions are thought to have intrapersonal and interpersonal consequences relevant to the navigation of social hierarchies.

The assessment of personality disorder: methodological, developmental, and contextual considerations.

The reliable and valid assessment of personality disorders (PDs) faces several challenges in different domains. In particular, the variety of methods, settings, and informants relevant for PD assessment raises questions about best practices. Additionally, issues surrounding assessment across the lifespan, including youth and the elderly, further complicate PD assessment. We review these issues here and point toward future directions in PD assessment, with an emphasis on the utility of dimensional PD assessment.