2 - (SYM 66) Recall of Achievement Events Increases Authentic Pride and Positive Affect

Positive affect (PA) has been shown to facilitate social approach behavior, a finding that suggests PA deficiencies may impede relationship development. Despite the growing body of research demonstrating deficiencies in PA in individuals with social anxiety (SA), few studies have examined specific positive affect states in this context. An intriguing study by Cohen and Huppert (2018) found that pride, a positive self-conscious emotion, displayed the strongest negative association with SA among different PA types. So far, little work has examined strategies for increasing pride. The goal of our research was to evaluate the extent to which recall of personal accomplishments might increase pride, and if so, whether SA affects this relationship. We also explored whether SA is associated with recall of different types of achievement events, and whether recall affected changes in more global positive (PA) and/or negative affect (NA).

Method: We recruited a community sample (N = 396) online using Prolific. Participants were of 18 different self-reported ethnic backgrounds (including various mixed backgrounds), with the most common being White (65%), East Asian (8%), Black (7%), and mixed-ethnicity (6%). Participants were asked to recall and write about either three personal achievement events or three emotionally neutral events (i.e., daily routines), and completed measures of pride, PA, and NA before and after the writing task, in addition to a SAD symptom measure. Memory narratives were coded to reflect 5 categories of achievement events.

Results: Participants high on SAD symptoms did not differ from those with minimal symptoms in the type of achievements described, indicating that memory biases were unlikely to have affected recall in this task. Repeated-measures analyses indicated that achievement recall produced significantly greater increases in pride and global PA relative to the control condition, whereas NA decreased. Although higher levels of SA were associated with lower levels of pride both before and after the task, social anxiety did not affect change in pride.

Conclusions:  Recalling one’s accomplishments may be an effective way to boost PA, and pride specifically. Further research is warranted to determine whether achievement recall increases pride and PA in individuals with SAD, and if so, might facilitate social approach behavior.