Pride: definition?

[Mellinia]

Can the human notion of "pride" be defined as the "recognization of the ability to live"? The human need for continuity of existence of self, country, race, etc seem to be predominant in our daily decisions.

[immortal]

The feeling of pride is a result of the thinking ego continuously making judgements about one's own possessions, achievements, accomplishments and qualities. It is caused by a feeling of individuality, when ego cease pride ceases to exist too.

[Mellinia]

Take this anology: If I slap you, would you have the initial urge to inflict pain to me?

[immortal]

That would depend on where you would slap me, in public or a private room, also on your gender and other conditions. An egoistic person will obviously urge towards you with the aim of inflicting pain to you since his self-image was scrutinized under a wide public I bet he would really want to kill you but he controls since he knows that the public is watching him and doesn't like to destroy his self-image, if he is humble then he would show you his other cheek so that you can slap him again. It seems people act differently during different situations making a judgement on one's own personal image of how others think of them.

[charles brough]

Can the human notion of "pride" be defined as the "recognization of the ability to live"? The human need for continuity of existence of self, country, race, etc seem to be predominant in our daily decisions.

Never mind the definition. What counts is what it really is:

 

Pride, ego, status, self-respect, etc. are sought instinctively by not only people but all mammals. We compete with each other for attention and status in life. That is the Alpha character in us. Two bulls fighting for dominance is characteristic and women also compete for status among themselves---but for men, it is for women as well as other men. A man who has achieved what others call "success" feels better and has confidence which others detect. Because of it, they tend to differ to him. All service people are grilled in how to give that feeling to the customer whether he or she has status or not.

 

Men who have testosterone Alpha levels but who meet what to them are overpowering obstacles to success (or what we call there in the US, "the American Dream,") tend to beat their wives and children as well as bully others and, in some cases, go out determined just to kill people.

Edited December 11, 2011 by charles brough

[PhDwannabe]

Men who have testosterone Alpha levels but who meet what to them are overpowering obstacles to success (or what we call there in the US, "the American Dream,") tend to beat their wives and children as well as bully others and, in some cases, go out determined just to kill people.

Can I have some clarification on this, and maybe some evidence? Are you suggesting some effect of testosterone on behavior? Plenty of literature on it. Can I see some?

[Mellinia]

That would depend on where you would slap me, in public or a private room, also on your gender and other conditions. An egoistic person will obviously urge towards you with the aim of inflicting pain to you since his self-image was scrutinized under a wide public I bet he would really want to kill you but he controls since he knows that the public is watching him and doesn't like to destroy his self-image, if he is humble then he would show you his other cheek so that you can slap him again. It seems people act differently during different situations making a judgement on one's own personal image of how others think of them.

 

I mean the initial urge, the instant moment after you realised someone slapped you but yeah I see that a person would still evaluate his or her surroundings before making a decision. Though I can't see why a "humble" person would allow you to slap him again. Are there cases of this happening?

[immortal]

I mean the initial urge, the instant moment after you realised someone slapped you but yeah I see that a person would still evaluate his or her surroundings before making a decision. Though I can't see why a "humble" person would allow you to slap him again. Are there cases of this happening?

 

Yes there were few pacifists who had this view mainly Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi. Displaying an act of humility even when being treated very badly by someone.

 

Turning the other cheek

 

What does it mean?

[Mellinia]

Yes there were few pacifists who had this view mainly Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi. Displaying an act of humility even when being treated very badly by someone.

 

Turning the other cheek

 

What does it mean?

 

Do humans want to regain lost pride? Why does the 'revenge' mechanism seem to be span most cultures?

[immortal]

It is because our society is constructed that way, everyone tries to develop a status or image or identity of their own, it our wants and desires which defines our identity and high status mean other people will treat you well, you have more luxury, you'll get what ever you want but you're not the only one competing for the resources there are other individuals too and they see that you're a hinderance in the path to achieve their glory and your mind keeps bringing his picture infront of you everytime you think of your goals and projects him as your enemy and you'll think if I eliminate him or derail him then your path becomes easier and this is when people take revenge on others even if they had done no harm to you. So it is a subjective thing, you can let go and find peace, some fight for their country and some fight for glory.

 

I think sexual selection is one of the major reasons for wide span of revenge mechanisms in our cultures where organisms compete to become Alpha males to breed with the best in the gene pool and revenge mechanisms start to work and decide who gets what.

 

 

[PhDwannabe]

It is because our society is constructed that way, everyone tries to develop a status or image or identity of their own

Do you really think that individuation and status motivations are unique to "our" society?

[Mellinia]

It is because our society is constructed that way, everyone tries to develop a status or image or identity of their own, it our wants and desires which defines our identity and high status mean other people will treat you well, you have more luxury, you'll get what ever you want but you're not the only one competing for the resources there are other individuals too and they see that you're a hinderance in the path to achieve their glory and your mind keeps bringing his picture infront of you everytime you think of your goals and projects him as your enemy and you'll think if I eliminate him or derail him then your path becomes easier and this is when people take revenge on others even if they had done no harm to you. So it is a subjective thing, you can let go and find peace, some fight for their country and some fight for glory.

 

I think sexual selection is one of the major reasons for wide span of revenge mechanisms in our cultures where organisms compete to become Alpha males to breed with the best in the gene pool and revenge mechanisms start to work and decide who gets what.

 

 

 

So basically pride is a product of the society and our desires?

[immortal]

So basically pride is a product of the society and our desires?

 

Do you really think that individuation and status motivations are unique to "our" society?

 

As I said in my first post, pride is a product of the 'thinking ego' and you can't do much with out that 'ego', it is this which plays with us, I think this 'thinking ego' is present in everyone so it must be common to all cultures and societies.

 

Our Social Interaction and internal desires are like raw materials for the thinking ego it can go on and turn you into something ugly or suppress the feeling of pride completely.

[Realitycheck]

Pride is a feeling of glory that one holds to that which is associated with himself, whether it is towards his family, or business(es), or his accomplishments, such as the accumulation of wealth, or it can be applied to the accomplishments of others, like his children. A person can also feel pride for other, less tangible things, as well, such as a person can feel proud that his son has the values to help disabled children or the homeless or whatever. It is basically just a status of feeling good about something associated with himself.

Edited December 14, 2011 by Realitycheck

[Mellinia]

 

As I said in my first post, pride is a product of the 'thinking ego' and you can't do much with out that 'ego', it is this which plays with us, I think this 'thinking ego' is present in everyone so it must be common to all cultures and societies.

 

Our Social Interaction and internal desires are like raw materials for the thinking ego it can go on and turn you into something ugly or suppress the feeling of pride completely.

 

The thinking ego is just...there?!

[immortal]

The thinking ego is just...there?!

 

 

It should be there, we all know that we think and we also know that our thoughts are pretty organized mots of the times unless if you're suffering from schizophrenia. The ego is assigned some specific functions Ego psychology.

 

Sigmund Freud in his structural model distinguished three mental elements that were necessary for normal functioning of a personality, its the Id, ego and the super-ego. Id, ego and super-ego

 

Id - it is the internal animal instincts, or desires and actions that are inherent in us right from when we were born and it can be easily explained by neuronal development of the brain, its something which we have got from the evolutionary process.

 

ego - it is the entity which organizes everything, resolving conflicts between the Id, external world and the super-ego, it resloves conflict between our internal instincts and the true reality present in the external world. For example - it is a natural instinct for babies to tickle the womens breasts but this behaviour will start to reduce as the child grows old and realizes the external world and the reality, therefore the ego removes the conflict between the Id and the external world. It is something associated with the mind more than the brain.

 

super-ego - it is the entity which unconsiously works to have a social behaviour and it suppresses the desires of the Id which are unsocial or behaviours which are dangerous to society.

 

How the ego co-ordinates all this functions and conflicts is yet to be demonstrated since we still don't know how the brain organizes and categorizes its information and we don't know whether the ego can be simulated as functioning of the brain, an emergent property of the brain or it is something completely associated with the mind, very different from the brain.

 

According to the eastern psychology, your 'thinking ego' is none other than the 'personal god' itself who resides in you, it is he who stimulate and control our thoughts. So it is the god which makes the mind 'think', the mind can not think just all by itself. Thinking that it thinks on its own, there by thinking that "I'm the doership of all actions" leads to the origin of Pride.

[Mellinia]

ah. That clears up a bit. Thanks!

[immortal]

I'm Glad that helped .

[PhDwannabe]

...uhhh, yeah, Freud's tripartite model of the psyche... sort of a neat poetic metaphor that's unsupported and largely discarded by modern, serious, empirical psychological science. Has been for many, many decades. Just so everyone knows. Sometimes that part doesn't get across clearly in intro psych.

Edited December 16, 2011 by PhDwannabe

[immortal]

Curious to know how current empirical psychology views the ego, I'm not an expert here and hence I tried my best.

[PhDwannabe]

What do you mean by "ego?" It's just not a scientifically defined term; it's not really a construct of interest. The tripartite model is not supported. That's sort of how we view it. But you might be referring to some other phenomenon more narrowly. Awareness in general, let's say. If so, it's difficult to answer how "empirical psychology views awareness." The questions we typically ask are a bit more granular than that, so it'd be tough to answer you unless you can get much more specific.

[immortal]

Oh I see, then it is the view of a reductionist, reducing all phenomena to the empirical and to the areas of the brain. I think its important to point out for this thread that what I have explained from the beginning is the view of the old eastern psychology, I thought atleast there was some kind of a theoretical construct to it if not an empirical based one. Then according to the current empirical psychology "Pride" is something which originated from evolutionary psychology and we are hard-wired to think that way.

[PhDwannabe]

Oh I see, then it is the view of a reductionist, reducing all phenomena to the empirical and to the areas of the brain. I think its important to point out for this thread that what I have explained from the beginning is the view of the old eastern psychology, I thought atleast there was some kind of a theoretical construct to it if not an empirical based one. Then according to the current empirical psychology "Pride" is something which originated from evolutionary psychology and we are hard-wired to think that way.

 

 

This is not really what psychology is, or how psychology works. Let me try to clear a few things up:

 

1) Psychology, the science, is empirical. Science is empirical. That means that we, you know, gather evidence for stuff. So this statement "reducing all phenomena to the empirical" is sort of neither here nor there. We "examine phenomena empirically," like any other science does. We observe, record, make theory, test hypotheses.

 

2) "Reducing all phenomena to the areas of the brain" is another issue entirely, and it does not proceed necessarily from the empiricism of psychology or science. Most of us are not neuro-reductionists. I, even more than most, tend to be extremely skeptical about many of the current "findings" of neuroscience and the apparent specificity of their attempts to localize function. That's a completely different story. If you think "being scientific" in psychology means being a neuro-reductionist, you're just incorrect. You're forgiven for being incorrect, of course--this is a deduction someone "on the outside" might often make, it just doesn't happen to be true.

 

3) "According the the current empirical psychology pride is something which originated from evolutionary psychology and we are hard-wired to think that way?" Again: no. To be perfectly honest, most of us in psych sort of snicker at evo psych. It does some interesting things, but there are many, many limits upon the certainty of its inferences. The phrase "hard-wired" is a sort of a weasel word that doesn't really tell us anything or state anything rigorously.

 

4) In general, it's not really the task of psychology to tell us what something "is." No psychological researcher really sits around and asks, "what is pride," because you're asking about the "meaning" of a construct, which (depending on how meaning is construed here) not really something that the scientific method can really access all that well. If anything, we might seek to operationalize pride, to test which behaviors evoke it, to assess what personality types more commonly experience it, to vary social contingencies which might have bearing on its expression... those sorts of things. We might even attempt to delineate its characteristics--cognitive, affective, and behavioral--factor analyze them or subject them to other sorts of statistical machinery, see how they hang together. None of those things tell us what pride "is." Nor do we really need to know what it is, in many ways, in order to find out interesting things about it. It's just not what we do, or can do.

 

5) "Old eastern psychology" (whatever you mean by that, exactly, but I can guess) is not psychology. Alchemy was not chemistry. This is not to say that there was not (indeed, is not) value in these things. But they're not the sciences they're related to, or would influence or become--the differences between them are substantial and qualitative.

[immortal]

This is not really what psychology is, or how psychology works. Let me try to clear a few things up:

 

1) Psychology, the science, is empirical. Science is empirical. That means that we, you know, gather evidence for stuff. So this statement "reducing all phenomena to the empirical" is sort of neither here nor there. We "examine phenomena empirically," like any other science does. We observe, record, make theory, test hypotheses.

 

2) "Reducing all phenomena to the areas of the brain" is another issue entirely, and it does not proceed necessarily from the empiricism of psychology or science. Most of us are not neuro-reductionists. I, even more than most, tend to be extremely skeptical about many of the current "findings" of neuroscience and the apparent specificity of their attempts to localize function. That's a completely different story. If you think "being scientific" in psychology means being a neuro-reductionist, you're just incorrect. You're forgiven for being incorrect, of course--this is a deduction someone "on the outside" might often make, it just doesn't happen to be true.

 

3) "According the the current empirical psychology pride is something which originated from evolutionary psychology and we are hard-wired to think that way?" Again: no. To be perfectly honest, most of us in psych sort of snicker at evo psych. It does some interesting things, but there are many, many limits upon the certainty of its inferences. The phrase "hard-wired" is a sort of a weasel word that doesn't really tell us anything or state anything rigorously.

 

4) In general, it's not really the task of psychology to tell us what something "is." No psychological researcher really sits around and asks, "what is pride," because you're asking about the "meaning" of a construct, which (depending on how meaning is construed here) not really something that the scientific method can really access all that well. If anything, we might seek to operationalize pride, to test which behaviors evoke it, to assess what personality types more commonly experience it, to vary social contingencies which might have bearing on its expression... those sorts of things. We might even attempt to delineate its characteristics--cognitive, affective, and behavioral--factor analyze them or subject them to other sorts of statistical machinery, see how they hang together. None of those things tell us what pride "is." Nor do we really need to know what it is, in many ways, in order to find out interesting things about it. It's just not what we do, or can do.

 

5) "Old eastern psychology" (whatever you mean by that, exactly, but I can guess) is not psychology. Alchemy was not chemistry. This is not to say that there was not (indeed, is not) value in these things. But they're not the sciences they're related to, or would influence or become--the differences between them are substantial and qualitative.

 

 

Thanks for removing most of the misconceptions that I had in the field of Psychology, I did learned something, just didn't had any idea as to how psychologists would do their field work.

[PhDwannabe]

Thanks for removing most of the misconceptions that I had in the field of Psychology, I did learned something, just didn't had any idea as to how psychologists would do their field work.

 

I live to give.