The other side of malingering: supernormality

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Psychopathology

Background:

• Supernormality describes the denial of common symptoms like intrusive thoughts.
• A self-report measure, the Supernormality Scale (SS), was developed to assess this tendency.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the psychometric properties of the Supernormality Scale (SS).
• To assess the SS's utility in differentiating individuals across various clinical and nonclinical groups.

Main Methods:

• The SS was administered to nonclinical individuals, psychiatric patients, delinquents, and forensic patients.
• A feigning condition was introduced in the healthy control group to test validity.
• Test-retest stability, internal consistency, and accuracy parameters were analyzed.

Main Results:

• The SS demonstrated adequate test-retest stability and internal consistency.
• Higher SS scores correlated with denial of intrusive thoughts in forensic patients.
• Sensitivity and specificity analyses indicated potential for improvement in the SS's accuracy.

Conclusions:

• The Supernormality Scale (SS) shows promise as a research tool for quantifying symptom denial.
• Further validation and refinement may enhance the SS's clinical applicability.