Pride is defined by Merriam-Webster as "reasonable self-esteem" or "confidence and satisfaction in oneself". Oxford defines it as "the quality of having an excessively high opinion of oneself or one's own importance." Pride may be related to one's own abilities or achievements, positive characteristics of friends or family, or one's country. Richard Taylor defined pride as "the justified love of oneself", as opposed to false pride or narcissism. Similarly, St. Augustine defined it as "the love of one's own excellence", and Meher Baba called it "the specific feeling through which egoism manifests."
Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion that requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions (e.g. that pride is distinct from happiness and joy) through language-based interaction with others. Some social psychologists identify the nonverbal expression of pride as a means of sending a functional, automatically perceived signal of high social status.
Pride is viewed sometimes as corrupt or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a content sense of attachment toward one's own or another's choices and actions, or toward a whole group of people, and is a product of praise, independent self-reflection, and a fulfilled feeling of belonging. With a negative connotation pride refers to a foolishly and irrationally corrupt sense of one's personal value, status or accomplishments, used synonymously with hubris.
While some philosophers such as Aristotle (and George Bernard Shaw) consider pride (but not hubris) a profound virtue, some world religions consider pride's fraudulent form a sin, such as is expressed in Proverbs of the Hebrew Bible. In Judaism, pride is called the root of all evil. When viewed as a virtue, pride in one's abilities is known as virtuous pride, greatness of soul, or magnanimity, but when viewed as a vice it is often known to be self-idolatry, sadistic contempt, vanity, or vainglory. Other possible objects of pride are one's ethnicity, and one's sex identity (for example LGBT pride).
Etymology
Proud comes from late Old English , probably from Old French "brave, valiant" (11th century) (which became in French), from Late Latin term "useful", which is compared with the Latin "be of use". The sense of "having a high opinion of oneself", not in French, may reflect the Anglo-Saxons' opinion of the Norman knights who called themselves "proud".
Ancient Greek philosophy
Aristotle identified pride (, variously translated as proper pride, the greatness of soul and magnanimity) as the crown of the virtues, distinguishing it from vanity, temperance, and humility, thus:
He concludes then that
By contrast, Aristotle defined the vice of hubris as follows:
Thus, although pride and hubris are often deemed the same thing, for Aristotle and many philosophers hubris is an entirely different thing from pride.
Psychology
Pride, when classified as an emotion or passion, is both cognitive and evaluative; its object, that which it cognizes and evaluates, is the self and its properties, or something the proud individual identifies with. The field of psychology classifies it with guilt and shame as a self-conscious emotion that results from the evaluations of oneself and one's behavior according to internal and external standards. Pride results from satisfying or conforming to a standard; guilt or shame from defying it. There is a lack of research that addresses pride, perhaps because it is despised as well as valued in the individualist West, where it is experienced as pleasurable.
Emotion
In psychological terms, positive pride is "a pleasant, sometimes exhilarating, emotion that results from a positive self-evaluation". It was added to the University of California, Davis, "Set of Emotion Expressions", as one of three "self-conscious" emotions known to have recognizable expressions (along with embarrassment and shame).
The term "" was coined by Italian psychologist Isabella Poggi to describe the pride experienced and expressed in the moments following a personal triumph over adversity. Facial expressions and gestures that demonstrate pride can involve a lifting of the chin, smiles, or arms on hips to demonstrate victory. Individuals may implicitly grant status to others based solely on their expressions of pride, even in cases in which they wish to avoid doing so. Indeed, some studies show that the nonverbal expression of pride conveys a message that is automatically perceived by others about a person's high social status in a group.