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Published on: August 25, 2023
The roles of praise and social comparison information in the experience of pride
J Matthew Webster1, Jamieson Duvall, Leslie M Gaines
1Center on Drug and Alcohol Research, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40506-0350, USA. webster@uky.edu
Abstract:
The authors examined the roles of social comparisons, publicity of success, and praise on the experience of pride in an experiment in which college students successfully completed a timed intelligence task in private and later received 1 of 4 types of feedback from the experimenter: no feedback (private), mere public acknowledgment of completion, general praise containing both a public and an evaluative component, or praise containing explicit comparison information. Half of the participants also received written normative information suggesting they performed at a high level. Participants then completed a number of dependent measures, including a key measure of pride. Overall, results suggest that the public aspect of a performance, together with the superior standing suggested by any praise accompanying this publicity, is important in the experience of pride.
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