Pride

In almost every list, pride, or hubris, is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self. Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour." In Jacob Bidermann's medieval miracle play, Cenodoxus, pride is the deadliest of all the sins and leads directly to the damnation of the titulary famed Parisian doctor. In perhaps the best-known example, the story of Lucifer, pride was what caused his fall from Heaven, and his resultant transformation into Satan. In Dante's Divine Comedy, the penitents were forced to walk with stone slabs bearing down on their backs to induce feelings of humility. Pride is an inwardly directed emotion that carries two common meanings. With a negative connotation, pride refers to an inflated sense of one's personal status or accomplishments, often used synonymously with hubris. With a positive connotation, pride refers to a satisfied 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, or 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 it as linked to a signal of high social status. In contrast pride could also be defined as a disagreement with the truth. One definition of pride in the first sense comes from St. Augustine: "the love of one's own excellence". In this sense, the opposite of pride is either humility or guilt; the latter in particular being a sense of one's own failure in contrast to Augustine's notion of excellence.