Supplementary Materials

Spiritual Superiority

Study 1

Other measures

 Need for Uniqueness (Snyder & Fromkin, 1977) showed significant but small (r < .20) correlations with
spiritual superiority.
 To assess self-enhancement, we used the personality profiles measure by Bosson et al. (2003) and we
created a measure for overclaiming in the spiritual domain (cf. Gebauer et al., 2017; Paulhus et al.,
2003), but the interrelations of these measures with other measures cast doubt on their validity.
 Participants were presented with two short stories about people with a dilemma at work or in their
relationship, and were asked to describe their thoughts about these in an open-ended response format;
our goal was to rate how judgmental versus accepting their responses were, but we were unable to attain
sufficient inter-coder reliability.
 Big 5: The correlations in Table A were computed to examine if Spiritual Superiority is conceptually
distinct from the Big Five dimensions. All correlations are small to moderate, indicating that our scales
are distinct from existing personality domains. The correlations with Neuroticism are negative (column
4), so spiritual self-enhancement is inversely related to emotional instability as we anticipated. In
addition, we obtained significant positive correlations with Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Openness
to experience. We examined if these could be explained by Social Desirability, but all partial
correlations with this scale were similar. Self-Esteem, on the other hand, did account for many of the
correlations (see italicized entries in Table A), in particular with Agreeableness and Extraversion. For
Emotional Instability, too, partial correlations show that self-esteem is involved in the relationships with
Spiritual Superiority, Spiritual Guidance, and Supernatural Overconfidence. The associations with
Openness, finally, are hardly affected by self-esteem, even though self-esteem is significantly related to
this variable as well (r = .36).

Table A. Pearson correlations of Spiritual Superiority Scales and Supernatural Overconfidence with Big Five

traits. Italicized: Correlations with Self-Esteem partialled out.

Measure Agreeableness Extraversion Conscientious- Emotional Openness to

ness Instability experience

Spiritual Superiority .30* .16* .08 -.20* .31*

.14 * .06 .06 - .02 .21*

Spiritual Guidance .24* .19* .07 -.19* .37*

.07 .07 .06 .02 .26*

Supernatural .18* .15* -.01 -.15* .30*

Overconfidence .11 .07 -.02 .00 .22*

Note: * = p < .01

Correlational analyses Study 1

The correlation between Mindfulness and Spiritual superiority was significantly higher in the mindfulness group

(r = .44, N = 115, p < .001) than in the energetic group (r = .23, N = 94, p < .05) (z = 1.69, p < .05, one-tailed).

Thus, participants with mindfulness training in particular feel more spiritually better-than-average as they rate

their own mindfulness as higher.

We examined if the strong correlation between Mindfulness and Self-Esteem (r = .55, p < .01) accounts for the

relationships of Mindfulness with the Spiritual Superiority scales. For Spiritual superiority and Mindfulness, this

appeared to be the case: After partialling out self-esteem, this correlation became nonsignificant (r = .16). The

other significant correlations were reduced but remained significant after partialling out self-esteem (from r = .17

to r = .29), indicating that the associations can partly be explained by self-esteem. We also examined partial

correlations with Social Desirability (10 items, α = .72). This hardly affected the correlations, but note that the

correlation between Mindfulness and Social Desirability was lower to begin with (r = .31, p < .001).
Studies 1 and 2

Table B. Spiritual Superiority, Spiritual Guidance, and Supernatural Overconfidence as a Function of Type of

Training (Studies 1 and 2).

Measure Study 1: Study 1: Study 2: Study 2: Study 2: No Univariate F (4, 2161)

Energetic Mindfulness Mindfulness Mindfulness training
plus energetic
Spiritual superiority M = 5.36 a M = 4.74 b,c M = 4.50 b M = 4.98 c M = 4.16 d 58.56, p < .001
(SD = 1.01) (SD = 1.07) (SD = 1.00) (SD = 1.01) (SD = 1.03) η= .10

Spiritual Guidance M = 5.38 a M = 4.77 b M = 4.74 b M = 5.06 c M = 4.47 d 35.60 , p < .001
(SD = .82) (SD = .96) (SD = .95) (SD = .95) (SD = .96) η= .06

Supernatural M = 4.97 a M = 3.37 b,c M = 3.75 b M = 5.11 a M = 3.15 c 120.51, p < .001
Overconfidence (SD = 1.23) (SD = 1.41) (SD = 1.55) (SD = 1.42) (SD = 1.44) η= .18

Note: Within each row, means with noncommon subscripts are significantly (p < .05 after Bonferroni correction)
different in post-hoc contrast tests.
significantly (p < .05 after Bonferroni correction) different in post-hoc contrast tests.
Study 3

Method details

This study included 13 items aimed at capturing Intuition Overconfidence (see below) plus several measures of
cognitive overconfidence or humility, such as Leary et al.’s (2017) Intellectual Humility Scale (IHS). In addition,
we included the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; e.g., Pennycook, Cheyne, Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2016)
because it provides a performance measure of the motivation to suppress one’s initial gut feeling and examine it
by analytic thought.

Intuition Overconfidence

Intuition overconfidence
INT1 I have blind faith in my own intuition.
INT2* My feelings can sometimes deceive me.
INT3 I sense it intuitively when others’ motives are not genuine.
INT4 I sense it immediately whenever something is not right.
INT5* I notice that I am sometimes driven by tainted motives.
INT6* Even if something feels like the truth to me, I know I can be mistaken.
INT7 My first hunch about people is always right.
INT8* I’m not very good at picking up the atmosphere among people or in a group.
INT9* When I’m certain my feeling is right, I can still start doubting it because of what
someone else says.
INT10 To err is human, but when I go by my feelings I am very rarely mistaken.
INT11* When I have a strong hunch about something, I still always question it.
INT12 I am convinced I can follow my intuition to make the right decisions.
INT13* I often question my intuitions because I know I can be wrong like anybody else.

Cognitive humility measures1

 The Intellectual Humility Scale (IHS; Leary et al., 2017): measures the degree to which people recognize that

their beliefs and opinions may be fallible and are attentive to limitations in the evidentiary basis of their

beliefs and to their own limitations in obtaining and evaluating relevant information. The researchers had

trouble creating items that represent the contrasting pole of humility (Leary et al., 2017, p. 811, Footnote 3),

so their scale is unipolar (e.g. ‘I question my own opinions, positions, and viewpoints because they could be

wrong’; ‘I reconsider my opinions when presented with new evidence’).

 The Social Vigilantism Scale (SVS; Saucier & Webster, 2010): assesses the overconfident component, i.e.,

the tendency to regard one’s beliefs as superior and to impress and propagate them onto others with more

1
Factor analysis on all humility-related scales did not reveal the scales as distinct factors; instead, IHS merged with part of
OCS into a factor reflecting openness to all opinions, and SRS (Self-Righteousness Scale) merged with another part of OCS
in a factor reflecting a ‘know-it-all’-attitude. It is beyond the scope of this paper to examine the distinctions and overlap
between these scales, so we proceeded with the original scales as constructed.
 ‘ignorant’ opinions (e.g., ‘I try to get people to listen to me, because what I have to say makes a lot of sense’;

‘Some people just believe stupid things’). We used a selection of 10 items out of the 14 in the original scale.

Note that in Leary et al.’s study, this scale did not correlate with intellectual humility (r = .02), so humility

and overconfidence may indeed be independent dimensions. The alpha of SVS was .79 (10 items).

 The Open-minded Cognition Scale (OCS; Price, Ottati, Wilson, & Kim, 2015) which contains aspects of both

overconfidence and humility. This scale measures willingness to consider a variety of intellectual

perspectives, values, attitudes, opinions, or beliefs, even when they contradict one’s prior opinion (e.g.,

‘When thinking about an issue, I consider as many different opinions as possible’) as well as the contrast, a

closed-minded cognitive tendency to process information in a way that reinforces one’s opinions or

expectations, and inattention to competing perspectives and viewpoints (e.g., ‘I have no patience for

arguments I disagree with’). We used only the General subscale (6 items), not the Political and Religious

subscales. Its alpha was .64 (6 items).

 Four items from the Self-Righteousness Scale (SRS; Falbo & Belk, 1985); the other 3 items in this scale were

too ambiguous so that we were unable to converge on the translation. We dropped this scale from our

analyses because its reliability was insufficient (α = .43).

 Four items from the Spiritual Experience Index (Genia, 1991), assessing an open-minded, questioning

approach to faith. We selected 4 items that we could adapt to capture participants’ approach to their spiritual

school (e.g., ‘I believe that there is only one true spiritual direction’ instead of ‘one true faith’), which we

administered only among participants who were or had been involved in spiritual training. This scale, too,

was dropped because of low reliability (α = .52).

All of these scales primarily pertain to the cognitive domain of beliefs and opinions. Therefore, we expected to

find significant but moderate correlations with our Spiritual Superiority scale which primarily concerns feelings
and experiences, especially for SVS, which explicitly assesses the tendency to regard one’s beliefs as superior

(cf. Spiritual superiority) and to want to ‘enlighten’ others (cf. Spiritual Guidance). We included OCS to

examine the relationship of spiritual superiority with open- and closed-mindedness. For this scale, we did not

have preconceived expectancies regarding differential correlations with our subscales.

Cognitive Reflection Test

Study 3 also included the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005; Pennycook, Cheyne,

Koehler, & Fugelsang, 2016) which we included because it provides a performance measure of the motivation to

suppress one’s initial gut feeling and engage in analytic thought. This seems similar to critically examining one’s

intuitions and hunches in general, such as assesed by Intuition Overconfidence as well as Supernatural

Overconfidence. People who are confident in their intuitions are more likely to hold supernatural beliefs because,

due to their nonreflective cognitive style (reflected in a low CRT score), they more easily accept supernatural

causation after uncanny events which at first glance invite supernatural explanation (Bouvet & Bonnefon, 2015).
The same could apply to belief in one’s own supernatural abilities. For instance, when a friend calls whom you

were just thinking about, it instantly feels like the two are related. Without giving it further analytic thought, one

would ascribe extrasensory powers to the self. Thus, we expected that higher ratings on both Intuition

Overconfidence and Supernatural Overconfidence are associated with lower performance on the CRT. Thus, we

expected that higher ratings on both Intuition Overconfidence and Supernatural Overconfidence are associated

with lower performance on the CRT.

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005; Pennycook, Cheyne, Koehler, & Fugelsang,

2016) consists of three questions to which there is a correct or false response, e.g.: ‘A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in

total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? ___cents’. The intuitive response (in

this case, $1.00) is false, so in order to perform well, one has to suppress one’s gut feeling and engage in further

cognitive reflection. Pennycook et al. (2016) demonstrated that the CRT does not measure differences in the

strength of intuitions (the incorrect intuitive response arises in almost everybody’s mind when the problems are

presented), but rather the motivation to override them by engaging in analytic thought. Most people have an

immediate intuition in response to the problems, but the correct response requires being aware of the limitations

of one’s gut feeling and mustering one’s cognitive resources to check it.

Other measures

 The 15-item Dutch Need for Closure scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) was included because we expected need

for closure to be positively correlated with overconfidence and negatively with humility (cf. Porter &

Schumann, 2018). We do not describe this scale in the present paper because it is not pertinent to the main

issues under consideration here. Correlations of this scale (α = .88) with other scales were generally low,

from –.02 to –.07 for the Spiritual Superiority scales to –.20 with IHS and –.25 with OCS.
 The 5-item Socially Desirable Response Set–5 (SDRS-5, Hays et al., 1989) and 7 items from Paulhus’ (1991)

BIDR. α = .87

 A new measure of spiritual desirability: Participants who invest their self-esteem in spiritual development

may not be susceptible to social desirability but, instead, to a similar phenomenon that we might call spiritual

desirability. We developed a spiritual desirability scale, containing spiritual variants of undesirable thoughts

and behaviors that we all engage in sometimes: ‘Due to my spiritual development, I no longer have emotions

like greed, fear or envy’; ‘My 'ego' sometimes bothers me, for instance my need for recognition or respect’; ‘I

never make judgments about others’; ‘I always feel harmony and calm, even at difficult moments’; and ‘My

thoughts are always in the here and now’. The Spiritual Desirability scale had a just acceptable reliability of

α = .68 (5 items). Factor analysis revealed the distinction between a social (first factor, Eigen value 4.63) and

a spiritual component (second factor, Eigen value 1.51), although a few items from the SDRS-5 (‘I am

always courteous even to people who are disagreeable’ and ‘No matter who I’m talking to, I’m always a

good listener’) as well as the BIDR (‘I have never done anything for which I am ashamed’ and ‘I have never
 had a sense of gloating over the misfortune of someone else’) had higher loadings on the spiritual than on the

social factor. In the analyses, we maintained the scales as constructed.

Results

Correlations with the cognitive measures of overconfidence and humility are presented in Table C. Overall, they
were in the expected direction but moderate, indicating that our scales do not overlap with these existing
concepts. This suggests that intuitive and cognitive (e.g., intellectual) humility are distinct.

Table C. Pearson correlations in Study 3.

Measure 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1 Spiritual Superiority (α = .79) -

2 Spiritual Guidance (α = .77) .54* -
3 Supernatural Overconfidence (α .53* .35* -
= .89)
4 Self-esteem (α = .87) .17* .24* .12* -
5 Communal narcissism (α = .82) .47* .45* .39* .33* -
6 Intellectual Humility (IHS) (α = . .08 .17* .03 –.02 .03 -
66)
7 Open-minded Cognition (OCS) .09 .19* .06 .06 .05 .49* -
(α = .74)
8 Social Vigilantism (SVS) (α = . .34* .32* .18* .06 .30* –.04 –.29* -
79)
Notes: * = p < .001 (2-tailed)

As expected, Spiritual superiority and Spiritual Guidance correlate most strongly with SVS, which reflects

spiritual superiority and low esteem for others’ views in the domain of beliefs and opinions. Just as Leary et al.

(2017), we did not obtain a significant correlation between IHS and SVS, but IHS was related to OCS.

Unexpectedly, both IHS and OCS were somewhat positively related to Spiritual Guidance. It is possible that this

is due to social or spiritual desirability, because both Spiritual Guidance and being open-minded and humble are

desirable characteristics. But after partialling out social desirability, these correlations remained similar (both r =

.16, p < .001) and the same goes for spiritual desirability (both r = .18). Similarly, none of the other correlations

were meaningfully affected by partialling out these variables. Thus, social desirability nor spiritual desirability

turned out to be useful in explaining the pattern of correlations.

Cognitive Reflection Test. According to Pennycook et al. (2016), the most valid measure of reflective thinking is

the sum of correct responses. In our study, this score was related to Intuition Overconfidence (r = –.14, p < .001)

and Supernatural Overconfidence (r = –.11, p = .001) in the expected direction. This provides validation of the
scales, because the CRT is a performance measure that does not rely on self-report. It was not related to the other

two scales (r’s < .06).

Table D. All Measures as a Function of Type of Training in Study 3.

Measure Energetic Mindfulness No training Univariate F (2,786)

Spiritual superiority M = 5.24 a M = 4.60 b M = 4.33 c 39.31, p < .001

(SD = .96) (SD = .90) (SD = 1.00) η= .09

Spiritual Guidance M = 5.23 a M = 4.80 b M = 4.58 c 22.96 , p < .001

(SD = .84) (SD = .86) (SD = .95) η= .06

Supernatural M = 4.23 a M = 3.09 b M = 2.64 c 83.00, p < .001

Overconfidence (SD = 1.21) (SD = 1.17) (SD = 1.12) η= .17

Self-Esteem M = 5.24 a M = 4.82 b M = 4.64 b 8.88 , p < .001

(SD = 1.25) (SD = 1.38) (SD = 1.29) η= .02

15.09, p < .001

Communal M = 4.31 a M = 3.93 b M = 3.78 b
Narcissism (SD = .93) (SD = .89) (SD = .91)
η= .04

Social Desirability M = 4.23 a M = 3.89 b M = 4.01a,b 7.48, p < .005

(SD = .82) (SD = .84) (SD = .85) η= .02

5.52, p < .005

Spiritual M = 3.02 a M = 2.70 b M = 2.81a,b
Desirability (SD = .94) (SD = .89) (SD = .95)
η= .01

Intellectual M = 5.33 M = 5.32 M = 5.27 F<1

Humility (SD = .73) (SD = .67) (SD = .66)

Open-minded M = 4.95 M = 4.91 M = 4.85 F<1

Cognition (SD = .78) (SD = .81) (SD = .83)

Social Vigilance M = 3.66 M = 3.59 M = 3.64 F<1

(SD = .91) (SD = .92) (SD = .95)

CRT M = 1.12 M = 1.14 M = 1.11 F<1

(SD = 1.06) (SD = 1.07) (SD = 1.08)

Note: Within each row, means with noncommon subscripts are significantly (p < .05 after Bonferroni correction)
different in post-hoc contrast tests.
Table E. Pearson correlations of Self-Esteem with Spiritual Superiority and Supernatural Overconfidence as a

Function of Type of Training.

r of Self- Study 1: Study 1: Study 2: Study 2: Study 2: Study 3: Study 3: Study 3:

Esteem Energ. Mindful Mindful Mindful+ No Energ. Mindful No
with N=94 N=115 N=791 energ. training N=121 N=350 training
N=304 N=861 N=330
Spiritual .28 .47 b,c .22 b .31 c .18 d .28 .10 .10
sup-
eriority

Spiritual .44 .49 b .41 b .45 c .28 d .40 .18 .16

Guidance

Supernatur .34 .21 b .12 c .22 a .09 b .22 .09 –.07

al
 References

Bosson, J.K., Brown, R.P., Zeigler-Hill, V. & Swann, W.B. (2003). Self-enhancement tendencies among people
with high explicit self-esteem: the moderating role of implicit self-esteem. Self and Identity, 2, 169-187.
Bouvet, R., & Bonnefon, J. F. (2015). Non-reflective thinkers are predisposed to attribute supernatural causation
to uncanny experiences. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(7), 955-961.
Falbo, T., & Belk, S. S. (1985). A Short Scale to Measure Self-Righteousness. Journal of Personality
Assessment, 49(2), 172-177.
Frederick, S. (2005). Cognitive Reflection and Decision Making. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19(4), 25–
42.
Genia, V. (1991). The Spiritual Experience Index: A measure of spiritual maturity. Journal of Religion and
Health, 30, 337–347.
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality
domains. Journal of Research in personality, 37(6), 504-528.
Haghighat, R. (2007). The Development of the Brief Social Desirability Scale (BSDS). Europe’s Journal of
Psychology, 3(4), 144-154.
Leach, S., & Weick, M. (2017). Can people judge the veracity of their intuitions?. Social Psychological and
Personality Science, 9(1), 40-49.
Leary, M. R., Diebels, K. J., Davisson, E. K., Jongman-Sereno, K. P., Isherwood, J. C., Raimi, K. T., Deffler, S.
A., & Hoyle, R. H. (2017). Cognitive and interpersonal features of intellectual humility. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 43(6), 793-813.
Paulhus, D. L. (1991). Measurement and control of response bias. In J. P. Robinson & P. R. Shaver (Eds.),
Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (Vol. 1, pp. 17–59). San Diego, CA:
Academic Press.
Paulhus, D. L., Harms, P. D., Bruce, M. N., & Lysy, D. C. (2003). The over-claiming technique: measuring self-
enhancement independent of ability. Journal of personality and social psychology, 84(4), 890-904.
Paulhus, D.L., Graf, P. & Selst, M. van (1989). Attentional load increases the positivity of self-presentation.
Social Cognition, 7, 389-400.
Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2016). Is the cognitive reflection test a
measure of both reflection and intuition?. Behavior Research Methods, 48(1), 341-348.
Porter, T., & Schumann, K. (2018). Intellectual humility and openness to the opposing view. Self and
Identity, 17(2), 139-162.
Price, E., Ottati, V., Wilson, C., & Kim, S. (2015). Open-Minded Cognition. Personality & Social Psychology
Bulletin, 41(11), 1488–1504.
Saucier, D. A., & Webster, R. J. (2010). Social Vigilantism: Measuring Individual Differences in Belief
Superiority and Resistance to Persuasion. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36(1), 19–32.
Snyder, C. R., & Fromkin, H. L. (1977). Abnormality as a positive characteristic: The development and
validation of a scale measuring need for uniqueness. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 86(5), 518-527.
Stöber, J. (2001). The Social Desirability Scale-17 (SDS-17): Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and
relationship with age. European Journal of Psychological Assessment, 17(3), 222-232.