OMG Digital Magazine OMG Issue 291 11th January 2017 | Page 6

OMG Digital Magazine | 291 | Thursday 11 January 2017 • PAGE 6
SoulFood
Why Narcissism and High
Self-Esteem Are not the
Same Thing
By Emma Haak
Healthy self-worth, or self-obsessed? There's a key
difference you should know about, says Jessica Tracy, PhD
We all know someone who walks that fine line between
feeling good about themselves and being the grand
marshal of the "Aren't I awesome?" parade. If you're
wondering if they've got healthy self-esteem or if they've
tipped over into narcissist territory, ask them to describe
how they feel during their proudest moments.
People with healthy self-esteem experience pride that
usually includes descriptions of the effort that went into
the goal–narcissists will explain an unearned, over the
top pride, often because they think they're just naturally
amazing. Jessica Tracy, PhD, a professor of psychology at
the University of British Columbia who has spent much
of her career researching pride, found this link over the
course of several studies. "Feelings of authentic pride are
related to having high self-esteem, while hubristic pride
is related to narcissistic traits like entitlement, arrogance
and egotism," says Tracy. Think of authentic pride as
the way you feel when you've poured hours into a work
presentation that goes really well, and hubristic pride as
the bragging by the colleague who barely helped but got
equal credit.
The positive kind of pride can be incredibly motivating.
One classic example is students who aren't happy with
their last test score studying harder for the next exam, and
it can help you reach any kind of goal, from committing
to three-times-a-week workouts to sticking to a budget
so you can save for a down payment. "We've found no
downsides with authentic pride," says Tracy. "These
people are, on average, successful, creative, they have
great relationships, and people look up to them."
Compare that with hubristic pride, and the fact that
people who exhibit it, according to Tracy, don't have good
relationships, and people generally don't like or respect
them. (Shocking, we know.)
You might be wondering where the idea that there are
two types of pride came from. Tracy and her colleagues
asked people to list every word they associate with
pride, including "accomplished, confident," "egotistic,
self-righteous." After whittling away the outliers and
plugging the remaining words into a computer program,
the researchers got two distinct groups of pride-related
words, "one with positive associations and one with
negative," says Tracy. "That told us that people actually
think about pride in two different ways."
It's possible to veer from the healthy kind of pride into the
not so healthy one, says Tracy, which raises the question
of how we keep that from happening. The strategy:
Focus on what you've done to earn that feeling of pride
and not on the feeling itself. "If you're just fixated on the
feeling, it becomes easy to want to get it without putting
in the hard work, to find the easier way, like athletes who
dope to win," says Tracy. And when you see someone
else exhibiting the not-so-flattering version, it can't hurt
to remind yourself that narcissism doesn't look good on
anyone, including you.