Unlike pride, the person and the object at the origin of the pride are well dissociated. The positive state procured by pride is reproducible insofar as this state is linked to a particular action. Pride therefore encourages action. One can, for example, be proud of an artistic production, and therefore want to be proud again of another production.

In pride, the attention is on the whole self: the individual who experiences such a feeling focuses on his success as a whole. This is often accompanied by insolence and contempt for others. It is for this reason that proud individuals experience so many difficulties in their interpersonal relationships. There are 3 main problems related to pride:

1) Emotion is fleeting, but people become addicted to it.

2) It is not tied to a particular action and therefore the person has to change their goals or their assessment of what constitutes success.

3) It has repercussions on interpersonal relationships by its contemptuous and insolent nature.

Pride doesn’t really get a good press these days. However, it is neither vanity nor pride but a pleasure linked to the recognition of one’s value or to the evaluation of one’s action, one’s project, one’s work. It is not necessary to be noticed to be proud. Everyone can be proud of what they have accomplished in the shadows, in the most total discretion.

More and more individuals are changing jobs, even if it means earning less money, to find a job that makes them proud and happy: this pride closer to craftsmanship than to a production logic centered on output and crazy productivity, without real meaning for the individual.

Sociologist Bénédicte Vidaillet denounces this way of working which no longer makes workers proud: “ the results to be achieved are increasingly defined from above, standardized and monitored, leading those in the field to feel that they cannot do their jobs well. Finally, the individualization of the evaluation leads to a generalized competition which degrades the relations between collaborators, breaks the teams, the confidence and the working atmosphere. At a time when burnout, also known as burnout at work, has never been so threatening, many would like to make the choice to work better, rather than work more.

The author Hugues Hotier warns workers against this “feeling of belonging” advocated by companies and which, according to him, should be distinguished from pride. For him, ” It is worth remembering that belonging to the organization is part of the means, if not the ends, of the scientific management of companies as advocated by Taylor “. Clearly, a management method aimed at artificially recreating this feeling of pride. 

« We are the puppets of our stories. The feeling of shame or pride that overwhelms our bodies or lightens our souls comes from our representation of ourselves. “. Boris Cyrulnik in Die say: shame.