Our new paper, Cross-Cultural Evidence that the Nonverbal Expression of Pride is an Automatic Status Signal, with Jess Tracy, Wanying Zhao and Joe Henrich, was just accepted in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. You can download the in-press copy of the paper here.
Abstract:
To test whether the pride expression is an implicit, reliably developing signal of high social status in humans, a series of experiments measured implicit and explicit cognitive associations between pride displays and high-status concepts in two culturally disparate populations—North American undergraduates and Fijian villagers living in a traditional, small- scale society. In both groups, pride displays produced strong implicit associations with high- status, despite Fijian social norms discouraging overt displays of pride. Also in both groups, implicit and explicit associations between emotion expressions and status were dissociated; despite the cross-cultural implicit association between pride displays and high-status, happy displays were, cross-culturally, the more powerful status indicator at an explicit level, and, among Fijians, happy and pride displays were equally strongly implicitly associated with status. Finally, a cultural difference emerged: Fijians viewed happy displays as more deserving of high- status than did North Americans, both implicitly and explicitly. Together, these findings suggest that the display and recognition of pride may be part of a suite of adaptations for negotiating status relationships, but that pride’s high-status message is largely communicated through implicit cognitive processes.