#77 - Research in Academic Pride
Human’s Evolutionary History with Pride
Today’s subject is Pride. And the scientific paper that I’m referring to is entitled, “Status, pride, and educational motivation: Understanding differences in attitudes to education from the perspective of evolutionary emotion theory”, by ARTIN WOLGAST, SAMI AJDAHI, ERIK HANSSON & SIMA WOLGAST.
Pride is an interesting topic because we see Pride arrive into our lives in a variety of forms. People are proud of peoples: themselves, their loved ones, and what culture that they are a part of. People are also proud of what they belong to, whether it’s the job they have, the schools they attend, or any other organizations that they participate in. Social Status and Class is also another one, as people are proud of how much money they make or what their economic situation is in.
All these different types of feelings are what we are talking about and is what the study has narrowed down on. In particular, this paper makes the claim that Pride is a Universal Human Emotion. There’s also another related concept to Pride and that is High Social Status. People move towards or strive to be of a high social status so that they can feel achieved, become satisfied with themselves, gain the resources they need to thrive, and a whole host of other important biological things. It’s deeply ingrained in who it is to be Human.
The context of this study however is education. So it seeks to study the relationships of Pride and how it motivates us to want to go to school and do well in life. Now before going further, there is a mechanism or framework that they reference that is big clue into how all these things work. It’s a four part system and these are the components that they studied throughout the entire investigation.
The Two Types of Pride
There are two types of pride. The first type is Authentic Pride. You can think of this as a humble hardworking sense of pride when somebody achieves something by their own merit. One can envision people who use their mind and figure their own ways to do the things that they want to do in life. It’s a healthy, sensible, and more social way of feeling proud. Usually, when people have Authentic Pride, it’s because what they have done is impressive to other people or it’s a goal that they obtained that is respectable by society. So there’s more of a social factor involved in feeling this sense of Pride. Not only that, but this form of pride is history driven as one can confidently say they are proud because there is record of the things they have done beforehand.
The other type is Hubristic Pride. This type of pride is what people feel of themselves, except it is more selfish and contains a lot more self-driven dialogue with oneself. People who are arrogant, like to brag, or always talk about their accomplishments to others in extremely self-confident ways are viewed as having Hubristic Pride. It’s considered more negative and not a very healthy form of pride. This is partially due to the fact that sometimes people will overestimate their abilities in their mind and this will lead to negative consequences for this person.
The Two Types of Ways of Getting What We Want
Historically, Humans have had two different ways or processes in getting what they want. In terms of getting High Social Status, there have been two ways which are Dominance and Prestige. Dominance is a method of initiating force, violence, taking away resources, or any other immense competitive means in order to arrive at what you want. You see this type of behaviour mostly in animals as they will exercise territorial control and whatever means necessary to control or gain the resources that are needed to survive. Examples of dominating behaviour are: using force, coercion, intimidation, force, self-interest, assertiveness, lack of respect, and nonverbal cues like directly staring at people, appearing strong, or displaying power. I like to think of this behaviour as the way your typical King would act in ancient times. At least that’s the metaphor I have in my mind.
The other process is Prestige. Prestige is a way of gaining achievements that others have respect for. It can seem like a more collective concept, because you are gaining a higher social status through the acceptance from others. Prestigious People are knowledgeable at what they do and so they exert their expertise in many ways. Such ways would include: educating other people, influencing others to make important decisions, being generous through Philanthropy, and in some cases being a positive role model through their behaviour.
Bottom line, Dominance Behaviour is rooted in power and exercising this power over others. While on the other hand, Prestige is based on Knowledge and utilizing skill to deliver favorable outcomes. It’s a vastly different way of looking at things and are two sides of the same coin.
Bridging the Two Ideas into a Single Model
The Study references cite a useful theory for connecting or bridging different types of behaviours with different types of pride. This is known as the Status Pride Model. This theory has been supported by other scholars and other scientific studies on the relationship between these four concepts.
In fact, it has been shown that there has been definite positive correlations between students getting high grades in school and their sense of prestige. That means as students grades get higher on a graph, then their sense of achievement also increases. This wasn’t the case for any sort of dominating behaviours. There is also a negative correlation between wanting to do well in school and having feelings of dominance. In hindsight, my thoughts are perhaps because the concept of Authentic Pride and Prestige are so closely related to the pursuit of knowledge and genuine achievement? This is why they lean more closely into these types of concepts versus the more negative dominance Hubristic Side of Pride.
Our assumptions About What the Status/Pride Model will Predict.
This model is useful in helping to understand if students want to go to school or not. Which is essentially Educational Motivation. This is a type of energized motivation to want to attend classes, academically perform well, and gain the highest education possible. The study suggests that If this particular model connects with a student's sense of wanting to go to school, then that will open up other avenues that can be researched. The model can connect other parts of the students that are important for consideration in Educational Motivation.
Another assumption that the authors make about this model is the influence of parents on a child’s sense of motivation. A parent's education is a strong part of what makes a child want to go to school and make good grades. This in turn affects the child as they are more likely to take pride in any thing they accomplish or high grades that they make. A parent’s sense of pride makes their children pride in turn.
The Key Study to Test out the Status Pride Model
Utilizing the Status Pride Model to guide researchers. A group of students were selected to participate in whether the model was accurate or not with the scholar’s predictions. The participants were Swedish students from 17 volunteered high schools. The average age of the students was 17 years old. And 63 percent were girls and 37 percent were boys. Most of the participants had parents who were born in Europe with a small few who were born in America. The different variables in the Status-Pride Model were looked at to make sure that the connections in this research study were similar to past scientist’s attempts.The research turned out as expected. And the results were similar to those studies conducted by scientists before.
The studies utilized graphs to chart the Status Pride Model and were looking specifically at Prestige as a variable in regards to the parent’s education. There were basically four levels of Prestige. A person who had parents with no high school had the lowest feeling of being accomplished. If at least one parent had high school it went up a little bit. If at least one parent had college it went up a little bit more. If both parents had college then this person felt the sense of accomplishment the most. So this chart showed that there was a positive trend between prestige and parent’s education. The same method was duplicated for Authentic Pride and researchers saw that same upwards positive trend.
This was all as expected since a parent’s education would influence or affect how proud and motivated a student would be in their schooling. Those students that perceive that it it possible to make achievements academically but there are barriers will often seek status through means of dominance.
Some Interesting Revelations About the Study
Some of the main conclusions for this paper were:
Positive views of education lead to positive outcomes.
There’s a connection between a parent’s and child's sense of pride.
If kids don’t think school will help them, they will use other means of achieving high status in society. In some cases this can be a part of the dominance set of behaviours.
Females, in general, are going to value education and feel Authentic Pride more than Males.
Males have more options leading to high social status than females.
Naturally, the more achieved a person becomes, the more Hubristic Pride they end up receiving over time.
The more educated parents are then the more Prestige and Authentic Pride a person will feel.
What can Educational Leaders do with this Information?
Educational Leaders, since this model of Status and Pride has been shown to be effective. I take it that it will be a great tool for you to use in your classrooms and across your districts in determining how proud your students are to be attending your institutions. I think this paper did a great job of presenting a theoretical framework, but it’s easy enough though to where it could be easily implemented into a questionnaire across your school district, if you wanted to gather this kind of data. This model can be used in other ways of course, since now we understand as humans, that we all seek a sort of high social status and want to reach great achievements. This can be as simple as recognizing people for their actual achievements and not giving out awards just because it is felt that one has to. Creating a hierarchy whether it’s in leadership or in some other way so people have something to work for. Letting students and staff get valuable prizes that make them want to work hard and reach certain milestones in their education. Or even celebrate schools that have gone above and beyond creating aspirational sort of status for other schools to follow.
