False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians

Abstract

The False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians (FSS-ROC) is a specialized psychometric assessment developed to quantify interpersonal inauthenticity, perceived social alienation, and relational false-self presentation among individuals within religious and faith-based peer communities. Adapted from the relational authenticity framework established by Donald Winnicott and operationalized in adolescent social domains by Sippola, Buchanan, and Kehoe (2007), the scale was contextualized by researchers in the psychology of religion—most prominently Dr. Richard Beck and colleagues at Abilene Christian University—to explore the specific socio-theological pressures that drive believers to suppress their genuine feelings, struggles, and personal identities in favor of conformist religious facades. Comprising a concise 7-item unidimensional inventory rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), the instrument captures core indicators of religious impression management, social fear of rejection, and lack of perceived relational validation from co-religionists.

Extensive psychometric investigations indicate that the FSS-ROC exhibits strong internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .82 to .88 across diverse Christian collegiate, church congregant, and clinical samples. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses robustly support a single-factor latent model, demonstrating excellent goodness-of-fit indices when accounting for the reverse-scored reverse item. Construct validity is supported by statistically significant convergent correlations with attachment anxiety and avoidance toward God, religious scrupulosity, clinical social anxiety, psychological distress, and neuroticism. Conversely, discriminant validity has been verified against general global self-esteem and intrinsic spiritual commitment, underscoring that the scale measures a distinct relational-environmental vulnerability rather than spiritual disillusionment or depressive symptomology per se. As both an empirical research instrument and a reflective pastoral counseling tool, the FSS-ROC provides essential insight into the developmental costs of toxic spiritual perfectionism and institutionalized social conformity.

Keywords

False Self, Relational Authenticity, Psychology of Religion, Religious Conformity, Impression Management, Attachment to God, Spiritual Inauthenticity, Christian Psychology, Social Desirability, Psychometrics

Authors

The False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians represents an adaptation of the relational false self paradigm originally operationalized by:

• Loran K. Sippola, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Expert in peer relationships, emotional adjustment, and adolescent developmental psychology.
• Christy M. Buchanan, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA. Specializes in adolescent development, parenting practices, and emotional well-being.
• Stacy Kehoe, M.A. — Developmental psychology researcher investigating peer socialization and romantic relational models.

The scale was formally adapted for faith-based relational and theological contexts by Richard Beck, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Abilene Christian University (ACU), Abilene, Texas, USA. Dr. Beck’s research centers on the convergence of social-cognitive psychology, attachment theory, existential psychodynamics, and Christian theology. Correspondence regarding religious attachment instrumentation is typically directed to Abilene Christian University, Department of Psychology, ACU Box 28011, Abilene, TX 79699.

Purpose

The core objective of the False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians (FSS-ROC) is to assess the subjective degree to which an individual feels compelled to disguise their authentic internal experiences, emotional vulnerability, doubts, and personal shortcomings when interacting with Christian peers and faith communities. Sociological and psychological studies of religious institutions repeatedly observe that church communities can paradoxically function as sources of profound belonging while simultaneously fostering environments of hyper-conformity, moralistic judgment, and spiritual perfectionism. In communities characterized by high normative behavioral expectations, individuals often experience an intense psychological pressure to project an image of unwavering faith, emotional stability, and moral rectitude. The FSS-ROC was engineered to scientifically isolate and quantify this specific form of religious impression management.

Within empirical psychological research, the instrument serves several pivotal purposes:

• Investigating Spiritual and Mental Health Correlates: Researchers utilize the scale to evaluate how perceived pressure to wear a spiritual mask associates with depressive symptoms, generalized anxiety, existential burnout, and spiritual demoralization.
• Examining Attachment Dynamics: In clinical psychology of religion studies, the FSS-ROC is implemented alongside attachment-to-God instruments (such as the Attachment to God Inventory) to delineate how insecure human-to-human attachment within church ecosystems parallels or diverges from insecure attachment to the Divine.
• Assessing Church Ecological Health: Sociologists and pastoral researchers utilize aggregate scores to determine whether a given congregation’s culture promotes vulnerability and psychological safety or reinforces punitive perfectionism and emotional suppression.

In clinical, pastoral, and counseling psychology settings, the FSS-ROC provides an indispensable diagnostic heuristic. Individuals recovering from religious trauma, ecclesiastical authoritarianism, or spiritual abuse frequently report severe identity fragmentation resulting from years of maintaining a false self to preserve community standing and family belonging. Clinicians working with faith-identifying clients employ the inventory to foster self-awareness, unravel cognitive distortions surrounding unworthiness, and systematically reconstruct authentic relational capacities.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the FSS-ROC resides at the theoretical intersection of psychoanalytic true self and false self constructs, humanistic conceptualizations of incongruence, and contemporary social-cognitive theories of self-presentation. The instrument measures relational false-self behavior within a specific peer subculture—specifically, fellow Christians.

Rather than conceptualizing inauthenticity as a stable, cross-situational personality trait, the modern developmental literature treats false self presentation as an interactional, context-dependent behavioral adaptation. Susan Harter and colleagues demonstrated that individuals frequently display authentic behavior in one relational sphere (such as with close friends) while displaying severe false-self suppression in another (such as with parents or romantic partners). In extending this construct to religious groups, the FSS-ROC isolates four core phenomenological facets:

1. Relational Incongruence and Identity Dissonance

This facet captures the painful subjective realization that one’s external presentation diverges sharply from one’s internal state. When interacting with faith peers, the respondent experiences an acute internal dissonance, feeling as though they are playing an assigned script or adopting an artificial persona. Items such as “I feel like I am a different person when I am interacting with other Christians” and “I don’t really act like my true self…” epitomize this internal alienation.

2. Coercive Impression Management and Approval Seeking

Rooted in fearful compliance, this dimension measures the perceived necessity to tailor words, theological opinions, and behavioral displays to secure approval and evade censure. Captured by items such as “I feel I have to act a certain way to please other Christians,” this construct reflects an external locus of control and conditional self-worth dictated by the immediate religious peer group.

3. Strategic Concealment and Vulnerability Avoidance

A protective psychological maneuver wherein the individual actively suppresses real-world struggles—including theological doubts, mental illness, sexual identity conflicts, and life stresses—out of anticipation of social shaming or exclusion. Represented by statements such as “In order for other Christians to like me, I cannot reveal certain things about myself to them.”

4. Perceived Relational Disconnection and Lack of Genuine Recognition

This experiential component addresses the cognitive consequence of prolonged false self behavior: the conviction that even if one is embraced by the community, the acceptance is hollow because the community only knows the performance, not the person. Captured inversely through items reflecting whether other Christians appreciate or know the “true” self, this facet strongly predicts chronic loneliness and interpersonal emptiness.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians draws upon three major theoretical foundations within psychology:

Winnicottian Psychoanalytic Theory

British psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott (1960) introduced the distinction between the “True Self” and the “False Self.” For Winnicott, the True Self originates from the spontaneous, non-reactive realization of somatic needs, authentic feelings, and core vitality. However, when the primary environment is insufficiently attuned, non-validating, or conditionally rejecting, the developing individual constructs a defensive “False Self.” This defensive apparatus organizes compliance with external environmental demands to shield the vulnerable True Self from annihilation, ridicule, or maternal abandonment. Applied to adult religious subcultures, the church community functions as a secondary “holding environment.” When this religious environment demands strict adherence to rigid doctrinal and emotional norms, individuals regress to an adaptive False Self, presenting a persona of piety while burying emotional and cognitive complexity.

Harter’s Developmental Model of Relational Authenticity

Susan Harter (1997, 2002) translated psychoanalytic insights into rigorous empirical developmental psychology, establishing that false-self behavior is intensely relational. Harter discovered that adolescents adopt false-self presentations primarily for two distinct reasons: (a) devaluing false self (actively manipulating others), or (b) relational compliance (attempting to preserve approval and belonging because unconditional acceptance is perceived as impossible). Sippola, Buchanan, and Kehoe (2007) built directly upon Harter’s operationalizations to examine how romantic partners elicit false-self behavior. Beck and associates then demonstrated that religious peer groups exert comparable developmental socialization pressures, where conformity functions as the price of admission to social validation.

Rogers’ Humanistic Theory and Sociometer Theory

Carl Rogers posited that psychological maladjustment occurs when an individual internalizes external “conditions of worth.” When social environments signal that one is valuable only when adhering to predetermined standards, an intolerable rift develops between the *organismic self* and the *ideal/phenomenological self*. Simultaneously, Leary’s sociometer theory posits that self-esteem functions as an internal monitoring system gauging social inclusion. In high-stakes religious groups where exclusion carries not merely social consequences but perceived eternal spiritual penalties, the individual’s sociometer demands stringent suppression of non-normative personal realities, solidifying a pathological religious false self.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians has been confirmed across several empirical investigations focusing on spiritual coping, attachment to God, and interpersonal functioning.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Convergent validity is robustly established through theoretical associations with established psychometric scales. Research by Beck and colleagues demonstrated that elevated scores on the FSS-ROC correlate positively and significantly with:

• Attachment Anxiety to God ($r \approx .38\text{ to } .49, p < .001$): Believers who project a false self before their church peers consistently report heightened anxieties regarding whether God loves, accepts, or will abandon them.
• Attachment Avoidance of God ($r \approx .32\text{ to } .44, p < .001$): Emotional suppression in human peer relationships correlates with emotional detachment and self-reliance in divine communion.
• Religious Scrupulosity and Moral Perfectionism ($r \approx .41, p < .001$): Compulsive concern over spiritual cleanliness closely aligns with heightened false-self posturing before fellow congregants.
• Depressive Symptomatology and Negative Affect ($r \approx .30\text{ to } .42, p < .01$): Replicating Harter’s classic findings, relational inauthenticity with one’s primary spiritual community accounts for significant variance in psychological distress.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity has been demonstrated by evaluating the FSS-ROC against measures of general cognitive ability, demographic factors, and intrinsic religiosity. Notably, the scale does not merely correlate with overall disengagement from religion; individuals displaying elevated false-self scores frequently exhibit high levels of religious attendance and institutional participation, indicating that the scale does not measure simple religious disillusionment or apostasy. Furthermore, correlations between the FSS-ROC and generalized social desirability scales (such as the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale) are low to moderate ($r = -.18\text{ to } -.24$), confirming that the inventory captures genuine psychological self-awareness of one’s relational mask rather than unreflective socially desirable responding.

Reliability

The reliability indices of the FSS-ROC indicate high internal consistency and temporal measurement stability across distinct sample populations.

Internal Consistency

Across validation studies utilizing Christian undergraduate cohorts, church small-group members, and theological seminary students, the 7-item scale demonstrates strong internal consistency:

• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Reported values consistently fall between .82 and .88, which exceeds standard psychometric thresholds for psychological scales of this brief length.
• McDonald’s Omega ($\omega$): Latent reliability analyses confirm high composite reliability, with $\omega$ values averaging .85.
• Corrected Item-Total Correlations: All six direct items typically exhibit item-total correlations between .52 and .76. Item 6 (“Other Christians appreciate me for who I am”), which is reverse-scored, occasionally exhibits a slightly lower but adequate item-total correlation ($r \approx .40\text{ to } .48$).

Test-Retest Reliability

In stability studies with test-retest intervals spanning 4 to 6 weeks among university students maintaining continuous involvement in the same faith community, the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was recorded at $r = .79$ ($p < .001$). This reflects substantial longitudinal stability while maintaining responsiveness to changes in social contexts (e.g., changing churches or exiting high-control spiritual environments).

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the FSS-ROC has been rigorously tested utilizing both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal Axis Factoring and Maximum Likelihood extraction with Promax rotation reliably produce an unambiguous unidimensional solution. Initial eigenvalues demonstrate a single dominant factor accounting for approximately 52% to 58% of the total item variance, with subsequent factors yielding eigenvalues substantially below Kaiser’s criterion of 1.0 (typically $\lambda_2 < 0.74$). Item factor loadings are uniformly strong across the six positive indicators:

• Item 1: $lambda = .72$
• Item 2: $lambda = .68$
• Item 3: $lambda = .81$
• Item 4: $lambda = .74$
• Item 5: $lambda = .84$
• Item 6 (Reversed): $lambda = -.49$ (or $.51$ upon inversion)
• Item 7: $lambda = .76$

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Structural evaluations testing a unidimensional latent model yield excellent model fit criteria when fitted with robust maximum likelihood (MLR) estimators:

• $\chi^2 / df$ ratio: $1.82$ (well below the conservative $3.0$ threshold)
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): $.974$
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): $.961$
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): $.048$ ($90%\text{ CI } [.024, .072]$)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): $.036$

These fit indices indicate that the construct is appropriately conceptualized as a singular latent dimension of relational inauthenticity with Christian peers.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The False Self Scale-Relationships with Other Christians is structured as a brief, self-report psychometric inventory designed for rapid administration in both empirical research and clinical diagnostic screening.

• Test Type: Standardized Self-Report Psychometric Rating Scale
• Format: Paper-and-pencil or online digital survey delivery
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 14 and above) who identify as Christian or regularly engage with Christian faith communities
• Item Count: 7 items
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert rating format:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Somewhat Disagree
  • 3 = Neither Agree nor Disagree
  • 4 = Somewhat Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Scoring Rules:
  • Item 6 is positively valenced and must be reverse-scored prior to total calculation ($1 = 5, 2 = 4, 3 = 3, 4 = 2, 5 = 1$).
  • Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 7 are scored directly ($1 = 1$ to $5 = 5$).
  • A continuous composite score is derived either by summing all 7 items (raw range: 7 to 35) or by computing the mean score across all items (range: 1.00 to 5.00).
  • Interpretation: Higher aggregate scores signify elevated levels of perceived alienation, identity masking, and false self presentation in relationships with other Christians. Scores above 3.5 typically demarcate clinically or pastorally significant relational distress within the subject’s spiritual ecosystem.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Test Year: The base peer relational false self scale was published in 2007 by Loran K. Sippola, Christy M. Buchanan, and Stacy Kehoe. The Christian relational adaptation was formulated and disseminated in subsequent empirical studies led by Richard Beck and colleagues at Abilene Christian University.

Permissions and Licensing: The FSS-ROC is considered an open academic research instrument. The original authors adapted the item stems under fair-use academic research permissions from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates / Taylor & Francis. The adapted measure is available free of financial charge for non-commercial academic research, educational demonstrations, and clinical/pastoral diagnostic applications. Researchers and clinicians wishing to publish data derived from the scale are required to provide appropriate formal citations to both Sippola et al. (2007) and the contextual work of Richard Beck.

References

• Beck, R. (2006). God of the oppressed: A defense-mechanism framework for understanding religion, prejudice, and systemic injustice. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 34(3), 275–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710603400307
• Beck, R., & McDonald, A. (2004). Attachment to God: The Attachment to God Inventory, tests of working model correspondence, and an exploration of faith group differences. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 32(2), 92–103. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164710403200202
• Harter, S. (2002). Authenticity. In C. R. Snyder & S. J. Lopez (Eds.), Handbook of Positive Psychology (pp. 382–394). Oxford University Press.
• Harter, S., Marold, D. B., Whitesell, N. R., & Cobbs, G. (1996). A model of 6th-8th grade students’ false self behavior with parents and peers: Causes, consequences, and validation. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 16(4), 361–383. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431696016004001
• Rogers, C. R. (1961). On Becoming a Person: A Therapist’s View of Psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
• Sippola, L. K., Buchanan, C. M., & Kehoe, S. (2007). Correlates of false self in adolescent romantic relationships. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 36(4), 515–521. https://doi.org/10.1080/15374410701651585
• Winnicott, D. W. (1960). Ego distortion in terms of true and false self. In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development (pp. 140–152). International Universities Press.

Items of the Scale