You can click through to the authors' original paper at [
onlinelibrary.wiley.com]. The paper didn't display online properly for me, and I had to download the PDF to read it.
As Vonk and Visser say in their conclusion, "The phenomenon of spiritual superiority is widely recognized." I've heard it referred to before as the "spiritual ego." It's neat that they claim to be able to measure the size of the spiritual ego!
They surveyed spiritual students and not spiritual teachers. They ask at the end of their paper: "The question is whether a truly enlightened person would even participate in our studies. Would such a person be interested in or even capable of answering all these 'me'-questions?"
Probably not, but an external observer
could analyze the spiritual teachers' words for
implicit me-statements.
For example, Tony once said something like, "Guru may share his love with many." I wish I could find the video that comes from, but I can't. Anyway, my point is that Tony is highly identified with the "guru" archetype, even if he would never admit this to a social psychologist.