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Aberrant Self-Promotion or Subclinical Psychopathy in a Swedish General Population

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Abstract

This article reports the first step of a Swedish validation process of an American instrument for assessing Aberrant Self-Promotion (ASP), a previously proposed personality profile which is conceptualized as a subclinical form of psychopathy. Psychopathy is, in this view, seen as an extreme expression of normally distributed personality traits. A study that investigated the occurence and frequency of ASP in an American student population using five personality questionnaires combined to form a single instrument was replicated. Contrary to expectations, ASP was found to be more common in Sweden (12%) than in the US (6–11%), and the gender gap in Sweden was larger than the gender gap found in America. Further studies of more gender-balanced and non-self-select samples are called for to verify our results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Göteborg University of Trolihattab/Uddevalia (HTU), Box 1240, SE-462 28, Vänersborg, Sweden

    Tonya M. I. Pethman & Soly I. Erlandsson

Authors
  1. Tonya M. I. Pethman
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  2. Soly I. Erlandsson
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Additional information

We thank Adlerbertska Forskningsfonden and Stiftelsen Lars Hiertas Minne for helping us fund our work with this project, and Svenska Institutet for a scholarship granted to Tonya Pethman. We also thank Bassam Michel EI-Khouri for providing us with the newest version of the program SLEIPNER and lots of good advice to go with it. Because SLEIPNER is made only for PCs, and we are both die-hard Mac users, without the practical assistance as well as the statistical insights of Gunne Grankvist we would have felt even more “PC challenged” than we do now—thanks! We are furthermore greatly indebted to Dr. Sigrid Gustafson for her help and advice throughout our work.

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Pethman, T.M.I., Erlandsson, S.I. Aberrant Self-Promotion or Subclinical Psychopathy in a Swedish General Population. Psychol Rec 52, 33–50 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395413

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