And what if you're not smart? Say you're in the bottom half for intelligence and not particularly good at anything? People take pride in all sorts of superficial things that they have little to no control over. Sports teams, nationality, hometown, whatever. There's no reason to feel pride in these things but people do it because the pride itself (and also the community) is something they crave.

It could also be that pride is like an addiction. The more you get the more you want. So maybe, given the opportunity to take pride in both meaningful and superficial things, people will more often than not choose both.

I don't know if any of that is true or not. But there's an awful lot of unearned pride in the world so I'm just guessing as to the reason for it.