Dec. 12, 2020
Check out this article from the Nov. 29, 2020 Psych News Daily--
The review covers a paper entitled "An Exploration of Spiritual Superiority: The Paradox of Self‐Enhancement," by Roos Vonk and Anouk Visser, published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Oct. 1, 2020.
Our blog has long charged the Spezzanos and their chief enablers with narcissism and find their rhetoric about the evils of the ego to be hypocritical and it feels true to us that their alleged closer connection to God to be merely a cynical marketing device. We find this part of the review of particular interest--
The authors argue that the lack of objectivity in the spiritual domain plays a role here. “Like religiosity, spirituality is a domain that seems like a safe and secure investment for self-worth,” they write. “One’s spiritual attainments allow lots of room for wishful thinking, thus easily lending themselves to the grip of the self-enhancement motive.”
And because spiritual matters are generally “elusive to external objective standards,” that makes them a “suitable domain for illusory beliefs about one’s superiority.”
The results of these three studies do not imply any casual direction; the authors suggest the causal arrow may work in both directions. On one hand, people may use spirituality as a self-esteem booster: it allows them to see themselves as special, and they can achieve progress in the spiritual domain relatively easily, as there are no objectively measurable outcomes (in contrast to, for example, sports, academic success, or wealth accumulation).
On the other hand, spiritual training may attract people who already feel superior. And the “extensive exploration of one’s personal thoughts and feelings” that spiritual training encourages “may be particularly appealing” to narcissists, the authors write.
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