Conceited talk: a test of hypotheses.

Abstract

Modesty, pride, and conceit may be understood as variations in the expression of personal esteem, which are manifested most richly in talk about the achievements of self and others. An earlier paper defined, described, and interrelated these three modes and set out some of the situational and structural conditions for their appearance. A field experiment was designed to test three hypotheses derived from this preliminary statement: (I) Conceited talk by a person about his achievements and the related achievements of others, as perceived by the audience, occurs more frequently when the audience is seen by the speaker as composed of people whose achievements in the activity in question are equal to or below his than when their achievements are clearly superior. (II) Talk by a person about his achievements and the related achievements of others identified as conceit by the audience is labeled as pride or even modesty by the speaker. (III) Conceit in sociable conversation is less frequent, regardless of level of achievement, than pride or modesty. Judgments of modesty, pride, and conceit in conversations about athletic achievement made by 2 control groups ( ns = 16, 12) of peers on high school and college football teams were compared with similar judgments of conversations made by two experimental groups ( ns = 15, 11) identically constituted except for the presence of a professional star. Hypotheses II and III are confirmed. The data do not support Hypothesis I, although they indirectly support an alternative proposition.