Pride: The Secret of Success

Front Cover
HarperCollins, Sep 20, 2016 - Self-Help - 245 pages
“Jessica Tracy has flipped the script on pride, showing that it’s not just a deadly sin to be avoided, but also a vitalizing virtue to be nurtured.” —Robert Cialdini, New York Times–bestselling author of Influence

Why did Paul Gauguin abandon middle-class life to follow the path of a starving artist? What explains the massive success of Steve Jobs, a man with great ideas but weak programming skills and a questionable managerial style? How did Dean Karnazes—the famed “Ultramarathon Man”—transform himself from a directionless desk jockey into an extreme athlete who once ran fifty marathons in fifty days?

As the renowned emotion researcher Jessica Tracy reveals, each of these superachievers has been motivated by an often maligned emotion: pride. Its dark, hubristic side is well known, but Tracy shows that pride is also essential for helping us become our best, brightest selves. It makes us strive for excellence. In the right doses and the right contexts, it has been proven to boost creativity, motivate altruism, and confer power and prestige on those who display it. In Pride, Tracy explains how we can make this double-edged emotion serve us—rather than the other way around.



Previously published in hardcover as Take Pride

“A revelation. A renowned psychologist, Jessica Tracy explains that seeking our best self is nothing to be ashamed of, but that seeking praise at all costs gets us into the worst kind of trouble” —Angela Duckworth, #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Grit

“Fascinating . . . Tracy uses original research to show that pride is a major part of what it means to be human and can be harnessed as a force for good.” —Daniel H. Pink, New York Times–bestselling author of Drive
 

Contents

1 The Nature of Pride
1
2 A Virtuous Sin
33
3 Me Myself and I
62
4 Like a Boss
84
5 The Carrot and the Stick
113
6 The Highest Form
145
7 Take Pride
169
Back Matter
199
Back Flap
225
Back Cover
226
Spine
227
Copyright

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About the author (2016)

JESSICA TRACY is professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where she also directs the Emotion & Self Lab. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, in 2005. Her research focuses on emotions and emotion expressions, and, in particular, those emotions that are most intricately intertwined with our sense of self: pride, shame, and guilt. She has coedited two academic volumes, The Self-Conscious Emotions and The Psychology of Social Status, and has published over eighty journal articles, book chapters, and theoretical reviews in psychology and interdisciplinary science journals. Winner of the James McKeen Cattell Dissertation Award from the New York Academy of Sciences and of the International Society for Self and Identity Early Career Award, she has had her research findings covered by hundreds of media outlets, including ABC’s Good Morning America, NPR’s All Things Considered, the New York Times, The Economist, and Scientific American. Tracy was born and raised in Washington, D.C., and now lives in Vancouver with her daughter, her partner, and their small dog.  

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