Pride. Pride is an emotional state deriving positive affect from the perceived value of a person or thing with which the subject has an intimate connection.
It may be inwardly or outwardly directed. 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.
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. Philosophers and social psychologists have noted that pride is a complex secondary emotion which requires the development of a sense of self and the mastery of relevant conceptual distinctions 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. In contrast, pride could also be defined as a lowly disagreement with the truth.
One definition of pride in the former sense comes from St. Augustine: the love of one's own excellence. A similar definition comes from Meher Baba: Pride is the specific feeling through which egoism manifests. Pride is sometimes viewed as corrupt or as a vice, sometimes as proper or as a virtue. Whil