American Hubris

I tried to make it make sense

In the days after Donald Trump was elected to his second term, I was riffling through a drawer full of old papers, looking for my birth certificate so I could renew my passport. I found a copy of an essay I had been working on in 2017. Sadly, it’s just as relevant today.

1. Prideful Lies

One of the most exasperating habits of the president-elect of the United States is his insistent touting of achievements that simply aren’t true. He called his 2016 win “one of the most decisive victories in American history,” despite a middling electoral win and a popular loss of three million votes. In a speech to the FBI, he bragged of “the biggest crowd” at his inauguration, although photographic evidence shows the turnout was well below that of President Obama. By the time he first took office, confronting his lies with facts had become an exhausting job for journalists and comics alike. And that may be what makes him such a fitting American leader.

For decades, American politicians and candidates have toasted our nation as “the greatest on earth,” the most liberated, the most prosperous, the most innovative, the most moral. But by many measures, this is demonstrably false. While the United States has the highest gross domestic product and our gargantuan military spending dwarfs all other nations, measures relating to health, quality of life, and liberty are less impressive.

We are seventh in education (twelfth in 2024) and 42nd in life expectancy (49th in 2024). Among wealthy countries, we have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality. In the Global Social Progress Index, which measures quality of life across a range of social factors in 170 countries, the United States comes in at 29. The most recent World Press Freedom Index by Reporters Without Borders listed the U.S. as number 55 in freedom of the press.

To the moderately informed, this is not news. All of these reports are available to the public and a diverse range of news outlets report on them. These markers and rankings are not insults to the nation or efforts to undermine American supremacy; they are a collection of facts and analyses, reminding us that the governance and wellbeing of a country is a massively complex range of issues and metrics. No nation is at the top of every list.

The ascendance of Donald Trump to the country’s highest office is one damning consequence of our national narcissism.

Yet, with every election, every stump speech, every state of the union, Americans are assured that we don’t just have the best, but that we are the best. Disregarding mountains of evidence, our leaders coddle us with the notion that our way is the best possible way, eliminating any need to evolve or learn from others. And the ascendance of Donald Trump to the country’s highest office is one damning consequence of this national narcissism.

Research into the dual nature of human pride offers clues to how Donald Trump attained the highest office in our country. America’s reliance on hubristic pride has prevented us from learning and progressing socially, economically, and scientifically. And it certainly contributed to our baffling choices in 2016 and 2024.

2. The Two Types of Pride

In her book, Take Pride: Why the Deadliest Sin Holds the Secret to Human Success, Professor Jessica Tracy, PhD of the University of British Columbia investigates the promise and peril of this complex human emotion.

One of the greatest questions Dr. Tracy wrestles with in her book is whether pride is a virtue or a vice. Does it preview the fall or lift us to greater achievements? The answer, essentially, is “it depends.”

In her studies of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and communication, Tracy identifies two very different forms of pride. Furthermore, she explains why they are each an effective method for gaining status and how the more destructive form of pride creates its own downfall.

The first kind of pride, the “good” kind, is authentic pride. Authentic pride is “based on relatively accurate — rather than enhanced — assessments of one’s self and thus on a genuine and authentic perception of one’s self-worth.” In interviews with research participants, Tracy and her team found that this kind of pride was described with words such as “achieving, accomplished, and productive” along with “confidence and self-worth”. You feel authentic pride when you work hard for something and see that your efforts have led to a desired achievement.

“Pride is not one thing. It is two things, and two things that are distinct in a meaningful way.”

-Dr. Jessica Tracy

But the research interviews diverged when discussing a different kind of pride. Some subjects used words like “arrogant egotistical and smug” to describe a time when they felt pride. Researchers have named this second type of emotion hubristic pride, after the Greek hubris, which applied to people whose overinflated self-perceptions led them to forget that they were mere mortals. This is the kind of pride you feel when you believe you are better than others, that you are intrinsically more valuable. But Tracy points out, “those prone to hubristic pride are not only narcissistic and low in self-esteem but also vulnerable to bouts of shame. They can be disagreeable, hostile, and manipulative, and, perhaps as a result, they tend to have fraught relationships and few close friends.”

If hubristic pride is so toxic, though, why would it not be weeded out by evolution? The answer is that this entitled form of pride, while alienating and psychologically damaging, is nevertheless an effective means of gaining power and status.

After reviewing the conflicting status-attainment theories that emerged from evolutionary scientists and social psychologists, Tracy explains a framework developed by Joseph Henrich and Francisco Gil-White, evolutionary anthropologists. Their dominance-prestige model asserts that humans gain status and power in two different ways. The first, dominance, occurs when people threaten, intimidate, and bully their way into power. Tracy draws a clear line from the behaviors associated with hubristic pride to the dominant attainment of status. “In fact, the arrogance and aggression that goes with hubristic pride might be exactly what’s needed to motivate people to treat others as inferiors and to force the weak to do as they say.” The other side of the dominance-prestige model, however, explains why intimidation and threats are not the only way people gain status.

Leaders who gain power through prestige are respected and valued by their society. Rather than being strong or wealthy, prestigious leaders are competent and knowledgeable. Bestowing rank upon them ensures that they will share their expertise and the resources it secures. When Tracy’s team surveyed college athletes on how their teammates are perceived and ranked, “those who reported frequent experiences of authentic pride were the ones whose teammates judged them as most prestigious.”

Unsurprisingly, members of a group defer to dominant and prestigious leaders for different reasons and their feelings toward those leaders are quite different. Dominant leaders are disliked by their group, the members of which feel they have no choice but to grant status to these bullies. Prestigious leaders, on the other hand, were respected rather than feared.

Wherever it falls in various rankings, it’s undeniable that the United States holds high status among the world’s countries. The nation’s influence is built on both dominance and prestige. Surely, the United States’ scientists, inventors, artists, and humanitarians acquire a level of prestige and respect. But that influence relies on an ever-present threat, both economic and military.

Both political leaders and everyday civilians are purveyors and mouthpieces of these different types of influence, which themselves are built on the different forms of pride. When politicians end addresses with “God bless America,” is it a prayer or an assertion of divine right? When children (and adults) are induced to sing “Proud to Be and American,” does that pride come from effort and accomplishment or a sense of intrinsic status and superiority?

3. How Pride Changes Us

Some Americans were surprised by the racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia that was so prominent and normalized by the Trump campaign. The optimists expressed incredulity and disappointment, while those more dubious of our progress as a society were quick to express their lack of surprise. The discussion around the threats, violence, and vandalism often centered on how the Republican candidate’s rhetoric galvanized and encouraged racists and white supremacists. When viewed through the lens of hubristic pride, we can see how Trump’s campaign encouraged those who we might always have considered racists, but also how his appeals to (white) American superiority radicalized people that might have seemed more reasonable a few years ago.

One of the factors that makes it so difficult to combat racism is the assertion that a person is either prejudiced or not, that our behavior is a consistent reflection of our fixed beliefs. Researchers like Tracy have shown that prejudice is more malleable than that.

The results were clear: hubris makes people express more prejudice.

Tracy and her colleagues wondered if the different types of pride would affect one of the most basic and universal sociological principles: group favoritism. In other words, does the experience of authentic or hubristic pride change the way we treat people who are specifically outside of our social group, ethnicity being one of the most recognizable divisions?

To test the effects of the two types of pride, Tracy and her team ran an experiment asking a group of Caucasian undergraduate students at the University of British Columbia to rate the occurrence of a variety of traits within the Asian-Canadian population. Some students were randomly selected to be primed with authentic pride and others with hubristic pride. The results were clear: hubris makes people express more prejudice. “White participants who’d been randomly assigned to write about a time they felt hubristic pride rated Asians more negatively than they did Caucasians. White participants who wrote about authentic pride did the opposite; they rated Asians more positively than people of their own race.”

Tracy’s team performed a similar experiment asking participants to set bail for a fictional gay male sex worker. The application of justice was similarly skewed by experiences of authentic and hubristic pride. “Those who were made to feel hubristic pride forced the gay prostitute to endure a harsher sentence than did those made to feel authentic pride.” Reliving past experiences of hubristic pride, the kind based on inordinate sense of importance and conceit, made participants excessively punish people unlike them. The sad fact is that this effect plays out on a daily basis in courtrooms across Canada and the United States. Bail and prison sentences could easily be affected by a judge’s pride experiences.

When people have power over others, specifically others that are not part of their ethnic or social group, the experience of hubristic pride makes them care less. It makes them less generous, less kind. And most Americans’ greatest way of exercising power over others is by voting.

4. Historic Hubris

The United States has never really abandoned the concept of manifest destiny, the ineffable conviction that America and Americans are fated for dominance and prosperity. As early as 1630, Puritan leader John Mathers anointed his American settlement as a “city upon a hill,” a phrase borrowed from the Book of Matthew. French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville alluded to American “exceptionalism” in 1831. Manifest destiny drew from these ideas, among others.

John O’Sullivan first used the term in an 1845 article urging the United States to annex Texas. “Our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” The term gained greater renown in December 1845 when O’Sullivan used it in an article claiming that the United States should have total claim to Oregon, a territory whose control was disputed by Britain. The term was adopted by legislators. This image of the United States as the pinnacle of human potential and the destined leader of the world also appeared in Abraham Lincoln’s 1862 remarks to congress when he called the nation “the last, best hope on Earth.”

Today’s historians ascribe three major tenets to the concept of manifest destiny. William E. Weeks phrased them as:

• The virtue of the American people and their institutions;
• The mission to spread these institutions, thereby redeeming and remaking the world in the image of the United States;
• The destiny under God to do this work.

Of course, the notion that Anglo settlers were the rightful heirs to the North American bounty is intertwined with claims of racial superiority. Even today, Americans tend to think of our own cultural practices as the most “civilized” and think that the rest of the world should learn to do things our way.

Ironically, this idea of being the rightful top of the food chain, the apex of human development was inherited from the British who used it to justify imperialism. Despite our claims of fierce independence, even our greatest flaw is imported.

And we carry on the idea of manifest destiny to this day. This idea that all would be better if we were in charge, that everything would fall apart without us. If we are the greatest, why would we learn from and adopt the systems and ideals of other countries?

Even when politicians extoll all that is wrong with the country, it is undergirded with the axiom that this is a bump in the road, a break from destiny that (with their help) can be easily corrected. The greatest nation on earth can’t be held back from its fated wealth and power for long. This rhetoric has fed American hubristic pride for decades.

5. Effort Versus Endowment

“Authentically proud participants wrote about positive events that were caused by something they did — the hard work they put in to make the success happen. Hubristically proud participants, in contrast, credited some larger aspect of their identities, something about who they were, like their abilities and talents of their stable personalities.” — Dr. Jessica Tracy

The problem is that when you feel destined for greatness, entitled to greatness, there is no reason to learn, to experiment, to adapt. And this may be part of what has kept America from making the strides in health, education, and energy that it might have over the past 20 years.

In comparison to other western democracies, the United States is still quite young and, one would hope, still learning and refining its identity. And this sense of intrinsic greatness and dominance doesn’t bode well for our education.

Psychologists have investigated the role of internal attribution in students. When a child does well on a task and is praised, it elicits pride, but the way they are praised makes all the difference. Children who are credited for the efforts, for their willingness to work hard on a problem, tend to seek out harder tasks and learn more. Children who are praised for an intrinsic quality (“You’re very smart”) prefer not to risk this status with new and challenging tasks.

These findings run parallel to Tracy’s conclusions regarding different types of pride and continued growth and achievement. “Because hubristic pride is linked to feelings of greatness that aren’t attributable to effort, feeling hubristic pride — or not feeling it — doesn’t typically make people want to put in more effort. Authentic pride is the kind that influences achievement.”

If America’s success and status is a product of intrinsic qualities, there is no need to continue learning and growing. Perhaps this is why, while both major parties cling to the “we’re #1” concept, patriotism and its terrifying look-alike, nationalism, are more associated with conservative politics. The desire to preserve society as it is (or revert to past practices) does suggest that the nation is already great, or at least was until people tried to improve it.

Progressive politics are based in change, experimentation, and new solutions. This is why progressives are behind most efforts to pursue universal healthcare, new energy, and reforms to reduce inequality. They see America not as a precious snowflake, perfect just the way it was born, but as a fallible entity, something that must be tested, stretched, improved, and questioned.

That is not to say that authentic pride is absent from conservative groups or individuals. Although “the desire to feel authentic pride motivates people to seek out achievements and learn new knowledge,” as Tracy says, it also motivates people to care for others.

Authentic pride drives us to learn and innovate, to search for something better, while hubristic pride leads us to be obstinate, refuse to admit mistakes, and to keep trying to pound a square peg into a round hole.

6. The Siren Call of Certainty

So hubristic pride is built into the American identity and Donald Trump stoked the flames with his rhetoric of simplistic policy, entitlement, and xenophobia. His infamous slogan, stitched and sold onto hats by his campaign and enterprising admirers alike, even reinforces the assumed American birthright of supremacy. If the nation is destined for dominance, prosperity, and glory, then why shouldn’t it be so simple to make America great again?

He assured his manic crowds that the problems our nation faces weren’t complex issues, requiring innovation, adaptation, and education. It was as simple as getting rid of the people that don’t belong, whether it’s Mexican immigrants, Muslims, or a woman who has defied denigrating, sexist men like him for decades. Once you throw out, wall off, or lock up the Others, that irrepressible American greatness will blossom. In the society he described, a white citizen would not have to learn new skills, compete for jobs, or develop new industries. In the world he painted, people like his supporters were guaranteed success.

But it wasn’t just the nationalist narcissism he fueled that helped Trump win. His personal hubris was an important element of his simplistic promises. Tracy explains that one reason dominance is an effective means of gaining status is that acting like you have all the answers is often enough to convince people that you do. Lehrer also touted the power of dominance displays in decision-making. Even when presented with better candidates, people faced with a hiring decision chose the more confident applicant, despite a clear lack of preparation. So, even though Hilary Clinton served as a senator and secretary of state, even though she outperformed Trump in every single debate, even though newspapers that hadn’t endorsed a democratic presidential candidate in decades urged voters to choose her, who won? A loud man who insisted he knew more than anyone else.

Americans were presented a shockingly clear choice between dominance and prestige. In 2016, 62 million voters chose the hollow path that disguised itself as easy.

7. How Much Will We Lose?

Dominance cloaks itself in strength to disguise its fragility. While Professor Tracy admits that displays of dominance and hubris are effective routes to status, that status is precarious. “For those who lead through dominance, power doesn’t last beyond their ability to wield control.” In other words, a dominant leader is only as good as their results. Tracy recounts how Steve Jobs’ dominant style of leadership was no longer tolerated when the company experienced a series of failures. If nobody likes you and you’re not producing results, even a ferocious bully can fall.

Since Trump is undoubtedly a leader who relies on dominance and hubris, we can hope that if he continues to fail, his power will be revoked (if not legally, at least in terms of social influence). Unfortunately, the mistrust of journalists and rejection of concrete fact and evidence has allowed many people to avoid the conclusion that Trump is both incompetent and impotent. It has bought him some time, but time is running out for America.

Even before the election of Donald Trump, the United States relied on a mixture of dominance and prestige to maintain global power. Yes, we made strides in technology and culture, but it was all girded by a gargantuan military arsenal. And the rest of the world cooperated as long as it was mutually beneficial. But with the United States endangering our allies by sharing sensitive intelligence, withdrawing from major agreements, and threatening isolationism, other world leaders are realizing that bowing to the behemoth might not be worth it.

We are losing influence, losing respect, losing the dominance that has served us for decades. The economic, cultural, and moral supremacy that the United States has so long declared as its birthright is eroding.

Many of us see that our emperor has no clothes, but with every day, our nation’s hubris grows more naked.

This essay is based heavily on the arguments and conclusions of a book called Take Pride: Why the Deadliest Sin Holds the Secret to Human Success by Professor Jessica Tracy, PhD of the University of British Columbia.