NT Experience

“I am better than others; others see me as valuable.”

NT people experience pride as roughly the emotional opposite of Shame and it may be viewed as both a virtue and a vice (in fact one of the seven deadly sins). Pride is a social signaling mechanism which maintains social hierarchy.

There are two types of pride:

Authentic Pride: Linked to Prestige. It signals to the group that an individual has high-value skills and should be granted status. It requires the perception of others’ respect via Social Salience.

Hubristic Pride: Linked to Dominance. It signals a claim to status without necessarily having the underlying competence. It is a competitive strategy.

Pride provides a Dopamine hit.

This blog entry is a nice write up on the concept.

My Experience

“The output meets or exceeds the specification.”

I value competence and utility. I want my work to be valued – this is what motivates me. There are two aspects:

• Logical Closure (primary) – resolution of a complex logic-puzzle. It is 100% internal and independent of external observation or deployment
• Systemic Utility (secondary) – value derived from the work being used. Not a social reward, but functional validation. If a solution is not deployed, its utility remains theoretical/latent.

I don’t value the social part of the acknowledgment – private is fine, or none. Seeing my work being used is value enough.

Lacking Social Salience I don’t feel any of the social aspects of pride. There may be a dopamine hit from closure, especially from a difficult problem. Mostly there is only a label on the event of “job well done” or “this helped somebody”. I do not feel better than others, I only feel that I have done what I set out to do.

Comparison

This is another instances of a heteronym – I use the same word for a completely different concept. They look the same to me (without seeing the social signals) but I am incapable of feeling the NT version of pride.

In both cases there is a desire to “do a good job”, which is helpful, but the reward mechanism is very different.

I need to be careful of my use of the word “pride” – it triggers many people to think of the seven deadly sins and has a negative connotation, where my internal meaning is entirely positive. It is often used by religion to indicate that obedience and conformance are important and that pride should be avoided. Given the comparative and social aspects of the NT emotion, I think that is probably for the best.

Semantic Divergence: yes.