Authentic/Hubristic Pride Controversies as a Window on Broader Emotion Measurement Issues

In our conceptual and empirical review (Dickens & Murphy, in press) of the Authentic Pride (AP) and Hubristic Pride (HP) scales (Tracy & Robins, 2007), we concluded that they do not validly assess a two-facet model of the emotion of pride. For instance, we concluded that the HP scale is not a measure of pride at all and suffers from other deficits (e.g., zero-inflated scores and lack of measurement precision) which make it unsuitable for use in most research. Yet, Tracy et al. (in press) raised insightful questions and counterpoints that show some of our arguments to be less dispositive than we had perceived them to be. In addition, some of the issues raised in this exchange speak to important issues in emotion assessment generally, some which have thus far been inadequately discussed in the field of emotion research. We (a) highlight a few of the main areas of disagreement between us and Tracy et al., while also (b) describing how these disagreements point to important issues in emotion assessment more broadly.