Take Pride by Jessica Tracy

Author:Jessica Tracy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol, and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.

The speech Obama gave that night was, without a doubt, one of the most important of his career. And although the president did not use the word proud to describe his feelings, it is nonetheless blatantly apparent from his confident and assertive manner, along with the words he did use—self-focused pronouns like I instead of we, again and again—that pride is exactly what he felt.

All humans feel pride in our accomplishments. But for the powerful among us, pride is more than just a good feeling about the me self—the set of representations that constitute and define our identities. For these individuals, pride is much more than a good feeling that boosts self-esteem. It’s the emotion that helped those in power get where they are. As we now know, pride sends a message about status. When we see people display the pride expression, we can’t help but perceive them as high in social rank, and we treat them accordingly—even if we think they don’t deserve it. If we don’t see a person’s expression but still somehow know that she feels pride, that’s enough to tell us that she merits high status.

Obama might have been trying to suppress his most overt displays of pride that night, but his feelings still came through—and it’s to his benefit that they did. Those who heard or watched the speech immediately came to see Obama as the person most responsible, and most deserving of credit, for bin Laden’s death. His popularity ratings surged, and pundits considered the 2012 presidential election all but decided.

To be sure, defeating al-Qaeda and conveying a sense of pride in that accomplishment was not the only reason Obama won the 2012 election (Mitt Romney’s “binders of women” might have had something to do with it). But it played a large part. Would these outcomes have occurred if Obama had taken down the leader of al-Qaeda but not followed it up with a public speech exuding pride? Maybe—after all, communicating one’s pride is not the only way to climb the social ladder. But it is an effective way. By expressing his pride, Obama made sure that he got the status bump he deserved for his greatest achievement to date as U.S. president.

Countless examples exist of powerful people who’ve sought to further enhance their status by publicly expressing a sense of pride in a major accomplishment. To take another: Less than a week before Obama told the world about his victory in Abbottabad, real estate mogul Donald Trump called his own press conference. Trump’s topic was different than Obama’s, but, like Obama, Trump was feeling proud, and he wanted to tell the world. He had been working hard for some time on a project of great importance to him, and he’d finally achieved success.

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