The Self-Absorption Scale: Reliability and validity in non-clinical samples

The lack of a measure of self-absorption, an excessive, sustained, and rigid focus on the self, has limited progress in research on the role of attentional processes in psychopathology. We describe the development of a measure of self-absorption that yields scores for private and public self-absorption. Factor analyses indicated that the measure has a clean factor structure, with two correlated factors. In a preliminary validation study using non-clinical participants, we embedded the private and public self-absorption constructs in a nomological network of constructs that implicate attentional processes. Both forms of self-absorption are correlated with a wide array of constructs in a pattern that corresponds to the conceptual definition of the construct. They also evidence incremental validity over their self-consciousness counterparts in associations with key constructs. These preliminary findings provide a firm basis for investigations of the role of self-absorption in psychopathology.