Is spiritual Transcendence Opposite to Self-Enhancement or Not?

Spiritual transcendence, constituting sixth „big” factor of personality, „represents the ability of an individual to stand outside of his/her immediate sense of time and place and to view life from a larger, more objective perspective” (Piedmont, 2010). It is associated with transcending boundaries of the self and feeling part of something bigger. One may therefore expect that spiritual transcendence will be in opposition with self-enhancement motives. In this presentation we will try to show, that it is not necessarily true. Quite opposite, spiritual transcendence correlates positively with some forms of narcissism.

In the first study (N = 307) associations between two forms of spiritual transcendence (religious and non-religious), four forms of narcissism (individual agentic, individual communal, collective agentic and collective communal) and tendency to overclaim were examined. According to expectations, religious form of spiritual transcendence correlated positively with both collective forms of narcissism, and with overclaiming. Nonreligious form of spiritual transcendence correlated positively with individual communal narcissism and negatively with individual agentic narcissism. The second study (N = 727) examined relations between spiritual transcendence and two narcissistic motives (admiration and rivalry). Religious form of spiritual transcendence was associated positively with admiration, and nonreligious form negatively with rivalry.

Results show that spiritual transcendence is about extending one’s self, not about quieting it. And being “spiritual” does not mean not being self-enhancing.

Key words: spiritual transcendence, self-enhancement, narcissism