Pride may facilitate cooperation with agentic though immoral individuals

Kuba Krys , Bogdan Wojciszke

Abstract

In most individualistic cultures, pride is regarded as a positive emotion that follows a positive evaluation of one’s competence or effort when achieving a goal. Fredrickson (2001) suggests that pride may expand individuals’ scope of attention and broaden their action repertoires by driving them toward greater achievements in the future. In the present study, we show that proud individuals may search for greater achievements by stronger willingness to cooperate with agentic though immoral individuals. We demonstrate that proud participants in comparison to participants in the control condition rely to a higher degree on information on agency and respect, and less on information on morality and liking of their potential partners of cooperation