Kindness and Pride: Expecting Something Back

Pride is sometimes described as the devil’s favorite sin. You may be wondering what pride has to do with doing good. I want to talk about that connection, but first, let’s look at the word itself.

The Turkish word kibir comes from the Arabic kibr, associated with greatness. In English, arrogance passed through French from the Latin arrogantia, ultimately linked to arrogare: to claim something for oneself. I find that meaning striking. There is something unsettling about a word that carries the idea of claiming more than is ours to claim.

We use language because there is so much we need to express. Things we can point to, and things we cannot: love, fear, anger, joy. We use it to tell the truth, and sometimes to lie. People don’t necessarily experience every feeling in exactly the same way, but some human experiences are recognizable across very different lives. Someone in a village in Zambia and someone in Pyongyang may speak entirely different languages, yet neither needs a long explanation to recognize fear or the feeling of being looked down on. Pride, I think, is like that. A brilliant mind can recognize it, and so can someone simply trying to get through an ordinary day.

Now let me get to the thin line between pride and kindness.

From childhood, many of us grow up with the impression that being good comes with a reward. Our parents, sometimes without giving it much thought, tell us, “Be a good child, behave yourself, and this or that will happen.” Somewhere along the way, we begin to believe that goodness must produce a result. If I do enough good, perhaps I will be valued. Perhaps people will respect me. If nothing else, perhaps I will feel better about myself.

I don’t question the value of being a good person or doing good. Whether you believe in God or look at life against the vastness of the universe, kindness can be one of the most honorable things we offer one another. What troubles me is the narrow line running through our expectations. I call that line pride. It can be difficult to see precisely because it hides behind something good.

Almost everyone has done something kind for someone, whether small or great. I don’t want to generalize, so let me give an example. Imagine a marriage in which you respect your spouse, take care of your child’s needs, try to be emotionally present for your partner, and treat their family with respect. There may be many other things you do as well. Naturally, you may feel that you have acted well. There is nothing wrong with finding satisfaction in that.

But then the marriage ends. Your spouse leaves, or their love is simply no longer there. Painful as that may be, another person’s feelings and decisions are not ours to command. Still, you begin to ask why. And among the answers that come to mind is this one: “But I was a good person. I gave them nothing but kindness.”

We set up a scale of justice and start weighing everything. Sometimes we are looking for fairness. Sometimes, without noticing it, we are also looking for proof that our goodness should have protected us from this ending. That is where I think pride can enter. Being hurt is not pride. Wanting honesty and respect is not pride. The problem begins when we treat our good deeds as a reason someone else must love us, stay with us, or make the choice we believe we deserve.

Psychologists Margaret Clark and Judson Mills drew a distinction between relationships based on mutual care and relationships based on exchange. In their 1979 research, people’s responses to giving and receiving help differed depending on which kind of relationship they expected. The study cannot explain any particular marriage, but it does remind me that closeness is not always something we can keep accounts for.^[1]

Another study makes me think about how we weigh those accounts. In 1979, Michael Ross and Fiore Sicoly examined how people remembered their contributions to shared activities, including among married couples. Participants generally found their own contributions easier to recall and tended to assign themselves more responsibility than others assigned to them. This doesn’t mean people are deliberately lying. It means that even a sincerely told story may be incomplete.^[2]

Perhaps that is why we so often hear a familiar story when a friend, a relative, or someone close to us talks about a person who has hurt them. Until the moment everything went wrong, they were the one who had done everything properly. They were the one who had been good. The other person, who isn’t there to answer, becomes the entire problem.

We find ourselves listening to a one-sided trial. The same person is the judge, the prosecutor, and the injured party. The defendant has no voice. Of course, real injustice exists, and sometimes the person telling the story truly has been wronged. But even then, I wonder how often we mistake our own account for the whole truth.

There is another nearby idea in psychology called moral licensing. A 2015 meta-analysis of 91 studies found evidence that, in some circumstances, behaving morally at one point can make people more willing to act questionably later. The authors also found signs that published studies reported stronger effects than unpublished ones. This is not the same thing as expecting affection in return for kindness, and it certainly does not prove anyone’s motives. Still, it raises a question worth asking: can the thought “I have been good” sometimes make it harder to examine ourselves honestly?^[3]

We search for answers, and we will keep searching. We are human. We make mistakes, and we become who we are through our choices and the things we have lived through. I am no exception. Sometimes the hardest part is admitting that doing many things right does not mean we could not have been wrong about something important.

And there is one more uncomfortable possibility: if I believe I can see the pride hiding behind other people’s good deeds, could that very certainty be another form of pride? I don’t think I should place myself outside the question I am asking.

I wrote this because I believe kindness matters deeply. If we could be good without quietly turning every good deed into a claim over someone else, perhaps we would leave a more livable world to those who come after us. I cannot pretend I have always managed that. There was a time when I thought differently, when I was caught up in my own pride and cast its shadow over the good I believed I had done.

So please don’t read this as a lesson from someone who has figured it all out. Consider it a reckoning with my own conscience. Whatever you take from it belongs to your own judgment and free will.

I wish you well. Until we meet again.

References

Clark, M. S., & Mills, J. (1979). Interpersonal attraction in exchange and communal relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(1), 12–24. doi.org
Ross, M., & Sicoly, F. (1979). Egocentric biases in availability and attribution. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(3), 322–336. doi.org
Blanken, I., van de Ven, N., & Zeelenberg, M. (2015). A meta-analytic review of moral licensing. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(4), 540–558. doi.org

Word origins: Online Etymology Dictionary, “arrogance” (etymonline.com); TDV İslâm Ansiklopedisi, “Kibir” (islamansiklopedisi.org.tr).

These studies concern patterns across participants. None can establish the intentions or moral character of a particular person.

References

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