Rape Supportive Attitude Scale

Abstract

The Rape Supportive Attitude Scale (RSAS), formulated by sociologist Ilsa L. Lottes in 1991, is a widely referenced psychometric instrument designed to assess cognitive endorsements of cultural myths, victim-blaming attributions, and ideological justifications surrounding sexual assault. Originating from an initial pool of 40 candidate items drawn from foundational empirical literature on sexual aggression, the final 20-item unifactorial instrument measures victim-callous belief systems across seven central thematic dimensions: (a) the erroneous notion that women find sexual violence or physical coercion stimulating, (b) the attribution of primary responsibility for rape prevention and de-escalation to female victims, (c) the misattribution of rape etiology to uncontrollable sexual desire rather than power, domination, and violent hostility, (d) the belief that sexual assault happens exclusively to certain categories of women based on reputation or conduct, (e) the stigmatization of survivors as diminished in social or intimate desirability, (f) the belief that false allegations of rape are rampant and driven by ulterior motives, and (g) situational justifications excusing male sexual aggression. Administered using a standard 5-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree), the RSAS demonstrates exceptional psychometric robustness across diverse collegiate and adult populations, showing high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = .91 across separate validation cohorts) and well-documented convergent, discriminant, and construct validity. Elevated scores on the scale correlate robustly with traditional and non-egalitarian gender roles, adversarial sexual beliefs, hypermasculinity, acceptance of interpersonal violence, and sexual callousness. This article provides a comprehensive academic analysis of the RSAS, detailing its psychometric development, latent factor structure, construct domains, diagnostic and research applications, administration protocols, and normative evaluative standards.

Keywords

Rape Supportive Attitude Scale, RSAS, Ilsa L. Lottes, rape myth acceptance, victim blaming, sexual aggression, psychometrics, adversarial sexual beliefs, hypermasculinity, gender role ideology

Authors

The Rape Supportive Attitude Scale was conceptualized, developed, and psychometrically validated by Ilsa L. Lottes, Ph.D., Professor Emerita in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Dr. Lottes has authored and co-authored foundational empirical investigations focusing on human sexuality, gender role socialization, sexual coercion, cross-national comparisons of sexual attitudes (notably between the United States and Sweden), and sociocultural models of sexual aggression against women.

In subsequent validation research and longitudinal panel studies exploring developmental trajectories of rape callousness among university students, Dr. Lottes collaborated extensively with scholars including Steven T. Bell and Peter J. Kuriloff at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, examining sociocultural determinants of aggression, institutional interventions, and ideological shifts over the collegiate lifecycle.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Rape Supportive Attitude Scale is to quantify the extent to which individuals subscribe to cultural myths, cognitive distortions, and ideological rationalizations that justify, minimize, or normalize sexual violence against women. Rather than assessing self-reported coercive behavior directly, the RSAS measures the cognitive and attitudinal substrate—often conceptualized in social psychology as “rape callousness” or “rape myth acceptance”—that fosters an interpersonal climate conducive to sexual victimization and secondary victimization within legal and institutional contexts.

Research Applications

In contemporary sociological, social psychological, and criminological research, the RSAS serves several critical investigative functions:

• Sociocultural and Etiological Modeling: Researchers employ the scale within structural equation modeling (SEM) and multivariate regression designs to examine how hostile sexism, patriarchal adherence, traditional masculinity, and peer-group dynamics predict tolerance for interpersonal violence and self-reported likelihood to sexually aggress.
• Cross-Cultural and Demographic Benchmarking: The RSAS facilitates cross-sectional and cross-national comparisons of gender ideology, tracing how different legal frameworks, comprehensive sex education systems, and societal gender equity indices attenuate or amplify victim-blaming belief systems.
• Longitudinal Developmental Research: The instrument allows investigators to track changes in attitudinal patterns across key developmental transitions, such as the transition from late adolescence into the university environment, measuring the socializing influence of fraternities, athletics, collegiate subcultures, and gender studies coursework.

Intervention and Educational Evaluation

Beyond theoretical modeling, the RSAS functions as a primary pre-test and post-test outcome metric for evaluating primary prevention campaigns, bystander intervention programs, and university sexual assault awareness curricula. By establishing an objective baseline of callous attitudes, institutional evaluators can gauge whether educational workshops successfully dismantle erroneous rape myths (such as beliefs regarding false reporting rates or female masochism) or whether supplementary, targeted educational interventions are required.

Forensic and Clinical Relevance

While the RSAS is not designed as an individualized diagnostic assessment tool for judicial guilt determination, its theoretical rationale carries profound implications for forensic and clinical psychology. The belief clusters indexed by the instrument mirror the precise cognitive distortions identified by clinical researchers (such as Marolla & Scully, 1982) among incarcerated sexual offenders, who frequently rationalize their crimes through perceived victim culpability, misperceptions of consent, and the belief that “women secretly desire force.” In therapeutic contexts involving survivors of sexual assault, understanding the ubiquity of these societal attitudes provides clinicians with crucial insight into the mechanics of internalized self-blame, social withdrawal, and the “second assault” encountered by victims when reporting to law enforcement, medical staff, or peer networks.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct operationalized by the Rape Supportive Attitude Scale is a multidimensional belief system termed rape callousness or rape-supportive ideology. Although psychometrically consolidating into a dominant, robust general factor, the scale deliberately captures seven distinct cognitive components identified in foundational feminist and sociological literature (Burt, 1980; Russell, 1975; Williams & Holmes, 1981):

1. The Belief that Women Enjoy Sexual Violence and Coercion

This dimension taps into the pernicious myth of female sexual masochism—the erroneous cultural trope that women unconsciously desire physical subjugation, find sexual coercion erotic, or deploy “token resistance” as a coquettish façade. Scale items assessing this dimension (e.g., Item 1: “Being roughed up is sexually stimulating to many women”; Item 8: “Sometimes the only way a man can get a cold woman turned on is to use force”; Item 13: “Many times a woman will pretend she doesn’t want to have intercourse… but she’s really hoping the man will force her”) reflect a fundamental misinterpretation of female autonomy, framing sexual violence as consensual role-play or naturalized courtship ritual.

2. The Belief that Women Bear Primary Responsibility for Rape Prevention

This cognitive domain transfers the burden of safety and moral culpability from the perpetrator onto the victim. It posits that a woman’s failure to maintain rigid defensive vigilance, her consumption of alcohol, or her engagement in consensual preparatory intimacy (such as necking or petting) justifies non-consensual progression. Exemplified by Item 5 (“If a girl engages in necking or petting and she lets things get out of hand, it is her fault if her partner forces sex on her”), this distortion frames male sexual aggression as an automatic, uncontrollable biological reflex triggered by female behavior.

3. Misattribution of Rape Motivation: Sex versus Power

A central tenet of feminist criminological theory is that rape is primarily an act of violence, hostility, humiliation, and domination, rather than an expression of healthy or uncontrollable sexual drive. The RSAS measures the public misunderstanding of this dynamic via Item 4 (“The reason most rapists commit rape is for sex”) and Item 18 (“Rape is the expression of an uncontrollable desire for sex”). Endorsement of these items normalizes aggression by pathologizing male sexual impulse as biologically overwhelming, thereby diminishing personal accountability.

4. The Belief that Rape Befalls Only “Certain Kinds” of Women

Rooted in the psychological just-world hypothesis, this construct dimension bifurcates women into “chaste, respectable” individuals who are supposedly safe from assault and “promiscuous, disreputable” individuals who invite or deserve violation. Assessed by Item 14 (“A woman who is stuck-up and thinks she is too good to talk to guys deserves to be taught a lesson”) and Item 16 (“In a majority of rapes the victim is promiscuous or had a bad reputation”), this belief functions to reassure observers of their own invulnerability while dehumanizing victims.

5. Degradation and Decreased Desirability Post-Assault

This sub-facet measures the stigmatizing social perception that a survivor of sexual assault is fundamentally “damaged,” “soiled,” or ruined in interpersonal value (Item 10: “A raped woman is a less desirable woman”). This construct reflects traditional property-based orientations toward female sexuality, wherein a woman’s worth is tied to chastity and exclusive sexual access, compounding psychological trauma through social ostracization.

6. The Belief in Widespread False Accusations

A prevalent component of rape culture is the suspicious presumption that women frequently fabricate claims of sexual assault for vengeful, financial, or reputational motives. The RSAS captures this belief through Item 6 (“Many women falsely report that they have been raped because they are pregnant and want to protect their reputation”), Item 9 (“A charge of rape two days after the act has occurred is probably not rape”), Item 15 (“One reason that women falsely report rape is that they frequently have a need to call attention to themselves”), and Item 20 (“Rape of a woman by a man she knows can be defined as a ‘woman who changed her mind afterwards’”). These items measure the systematic discounting of victim credibility.

7. Situational Justifications for Coercion

Finally, the scale measures situational scripts in which male coercive force is perceived as earned, excusable, or legally non-actionable. These scripts include scenarios involving prior intimacy, extended dating history, commercial or casual pickups, and perceived “leading on” (e.g., Items 2, 7, 11, and 19). By framing consent as an irrevocable contract granted by past behavior, respondents adhering to these items deny the ongoing, revocable nature of sexual consent.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the Rape Supportive Attitude Scale is situated at the intersection of feminist sociopolitical theory, cognitive social learning theory, and attribution theory.

Feminist Theory and Societal Hegemony

During the 1970s and 1980s, pioneering feminist theorists including Susan Brownmiller (1975) and Diana E. H. Russell (1975) fundamentally restructured scientific and legal understandings of sexual aggression. Brownmiller argued that rape is not an idiosyncratic, pathological sexual act committed by isolated deviants, but rather a functional mechanism of patriarchal intimidation that serves to maintain male dominance over women. In parallel, Burt (1980) introduced the empirical concept of “rape myths”—defined as prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists. Lottes (1991) built upon this foundation, arguing that rape-supportive attitudes do not exist in an ideological vacuum; they are integral manifestations of an overarching patriarchal belief system that prescribes rigid gender roles, encourages adversarial heterosexual relations, and accepts physical power as a legitimate mechanism of social control.

Attribution Theory and the Just-World Phenomenon

From a cognitive psychological standpoint, the RSAS draws heavily upon Melvin Lerner’s Just-World Hypothesis (1980) and Fritz Heider’s foundational attribution models. The just-world framework posits that individuals experience severe cognitive dissonance when confronted with random, catastrophic misfortune befalling an innocent person. To preserve the reassuring belief that the world is inherently orderly, fair, and predictable, observers systematically engage in defensive attribution: they scan the victim’s behavior, dress, location, and character for perceived lapses, concluding that the victim provoked, consented to, or deserved the assault. Within the RSAS, items attributing blame to “promiscuous” women or women who “let things get out of hand” directly operationalize these defensive cognitive maneuvers.

Social Learning and Script Theory

Under the sexual scripting theory developed by Gagnon and Simon (1973), human sexual conduct is guided by internalized sociocultural scripts that define appropriate actors, settings, motivations, and behavioral sequences. Traditional heterosexual scripts have historically framed courtship as an adversarial contest wherein men are expected to be persistent sexual initiators and conquerors, while women act as passive gatekeepers who feign disinterest before relenting. The RSAS captures ideological adherence to these archaic scripts, measuring the degree to which respondents view coercion not as a violent criminal assault, but merely as an intensified variant of normative sexual pursuit.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the Rape Supportive Attitude Scale has been extensively evaluated across diverse collegiate cohorts and adult community populations, demonstrating robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity.

Content and Face Validity

During initial scale construction, Lottes (1991) synthesized a candidate pool of 40 items compiled from established, pioneering psychometric inventories: the Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (Burt, 1980), the Attitudes Toward Rape Scale (Barnett & Feild, 1977), Mary P. Koss’s sexual experiences survey measures (1981), and Wheeler and Utigard’s (1984) gender stereotyping metrics. A rigorous content-validation process winnowed this pool down to 20 items. Items were retained only if they cleanly mapped onto one of the seven theoretically identified victim-callous dimensions and exhibited high item-total correlation coefficients alongside substantive factor loadings on a single unifying construct.

Convergent Validity

In the primary validation cohorts reported by Lottes (1991)—Sample 1 (N = 246) and Sample 2 (N = 390)—the RSAS demonstrated statistically significant convergent correlations (p < .001) in the theoretically predicted directions with an array of validated psychometric metrics:

• Adversarial Sexual Beliefs: Highly correlated at r = .65 (Sample 1) and r = .70 (Sample 2), demonstrating that individuals who view heterosexual dynamics as intrinsically deceptive, combative, and manipulative strongly endorse rape myths.
• Non-Egalitarian Gender Role Beliefs: Correlated at r = .58 (Sample 1) and r = .64 (Sample 2), confirming that adherence to traditional patriarchal gender hierarchies is intimately tied to rape callousness.
• Traditional Attitudes Toward Female Sexuality: Positively associated at r = .50 and r = .42, reflecting the double standard applied to sexually active women.
• Hypermasculinity Inventory: Evaluated among male respondents using Mosher and Sirkin’s (1984) scale, revealing robust positive correlations of r = .44 (Sample 1) and r = .52 (Sample 2), confirming that the “macho personality constellation” (callous sexual attitudes, violence as manly, danger as exciting) strongly fuels rape-supportive thinking.
• Arousal to Sexual Violence: Positively correlated at r = .32 and r = .37, providing behavioral/affective convergent evidence.
• Non-Acceptance of Homosexuality: Modestly correlated at r = .25 and r = .34, underscoring the link between rigid heterosexual orthodoxy and hostility toward sexual variance.

Known-Groups and Construct Validity

Consistent with decades of social psychological research on sexual violence attitudes, the RSAS demonstrated clear known-groups validity across biological sex. In both validation cohorts, male respondents scored significantly higher than female respondents (r = .36 and r = .35, p < .001), indicating substantially greater endorsement of victim-callous beliefs among men. Longitudinal follow-up research by Bell et al. (1992, 1995) further established construct validity by demonstrating significant inverse correlations between RSAS scores and measures of feminist identification, political liberalism, and social conscience among university students.

Reliability

The Rape Supportive Attitude Scale exhibits high reliability indices across diverse testing formats, institutional environments, and longitudinal time spans.

Internal Consistency

In Lottes’ (1991) foundational psychometric investigation, the full 20-item instrument demonstrated exemplary internal consistency:

• Sample 1 (N = 246 college students): Cronbach’s alpha (α) was .91.
• Sample 2 (N = 390 college students): Cronbach’s alpha (α) was .91.

Item-total correlations across both cohorts consistently exceeded standard psychometric thresholds (> .40), demonstrating that each of the 20 items contributes harmoniously to the overarching construct without idiosyncratic semantic drift or item redundancy.

Abbreviated Form Reliability

In independent methodological investigations, Bell, Kuriloff, Lottes, Nathanson, Judge, and Fogelson-Turet (1992) isolated a 12-item subset of the scale (incorporating items 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, and 19). When administered to a cohort of N = 521 first-year university undergraduates, this 12-item abbreviated version yielded a Cronbach’s alpha of .77. In a follow-up assessment of N = 300 of these students during their senior undergraduate year, the abbreviated scale maintained a Cronbach’s alpha of .76 (Bell, Lottes, & Kuriloff, 1995), demonstrating reliable structural stability across a truncated measurement battery.

Test-Retest Temporal Stability

In the multi-year panel study conducted by Bell, Lottes, and Kuriloff (1995), students who completed the abbreviated RSAS as first-year undergraduates were reassessed upon reaching their senior year—a longitudinal interval of over three years. Despite the profound personal, cognitive, and social development characteristic of the undergraduate collegiate experience, the 12-item scale yielded a test-retest correlation coefficient of r = .53 (p < .001). This moderate-to-high stability over a 36-to-48-month window illustrates that while rape-supportive attitudes represent deeply embedded cognitive schemas that remain relatively stable over time, they retain sufficient developmental plasticity to register longitudinal attitudinal shifts.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the RSAS was empirically evaluated by Lottes (1991) through Principal Components Analysis (PCA) across both independent development cohorts.

Unifactorial Dominance

Although the 20 items were selected to tap seven distinct contextual manifestations of rape myths (e.g., female enjoyment of force, false reporting, situational justification, victim promiscuity), mathematical extraction revealed that a single, dominant general factor accounted for the underlying variance across both cohorts:

• Variance Explained: In both Sample 1 (N = 246) and Sample 2 (N = 390), the first unrotated principal component accounted for 37% of the total variance.
• Factor Loadings: Every single item among the 20 statements loaded positively and substantially onto this primary component, with all factor loadings registering at .39 or greater (with the vast majority exceeding .50).
• Scree Test and Eigenvalue Distribution: Inspection of eigenvalue scree plots indicated a steep cliff following the first primary component, with secondary and tertiary eigenvalues dropping precipitously and failing to demonstrate theoretically coherent secondary subscales.

Methodological Implications of Unidimensionality

The empirical emergence of a single dominant factor has critical psychometric implications. It confirms that in adult cognitive processing, specific victim-blaming beliefs (e.g., believing a woman lies about rape due to pregnancy) do not function as isolated, fragmented cognitions. Rather, they represent multifaceted expressions of a single, coherent, overarching latent construct: rape callousness. Consequently, psychometricians and researchers are strongly advised to calculate and interpret a unified total score rather than decomposing the instrument into unstable subscale scores, ensuring maximum statistical power and structural validity.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The complete specifications and operational parameters of the Rape Supportive Attitude Scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Rape Supportive Attitude Scale (RSAS)
• Author: Ilsa L. Lottes, Ph.D. (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)
• Construct Assessed: Rape-supportive attitudes, victim-callous beliefs, and cultural rape myth acceptance
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire, optical mark recognition (machine-scoreable) answer sheet, or modern computerized/online survey platforms
• Target Population: Adults and collegiate populations (typically ages 18 and older)
• Number of Items: 20 items (standard full scale); 12 items (validated abbreviated subset)
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale scored as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Undecided / Have No Opinion
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Item Keying and Directionality: All 20 items are formulated in a unidirectional (rape-supportive) orientation; there are no reverse-coded items.
• Scoring Procedure: The respondent’s total scale score is derived by computing the direct arithmetic sum of all 20 items. Scores range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of 100. Higher cumulative scores reflect greater endorsement of rape myths, higher victim callousness, and greater acceptance of sexual violence. When utilizing the 12-item subset, total scores range from 12 to 60. Alternatively, researchers may compute an average item score (sum divided by number of items) yielding an index ranging from 1.00 to 5.00.
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 8 to 10 minutes for the full 20-item inventory.
• Administration Safeguards: To mitigate social desirability bias and disrupt automated response sets, the scale author recommends randomly interspersing the 20 RSAS items among filler items or general social attitude measures (e.g., within an omnibus questionnaire containing 50 to 70 additional Likert-type questions).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Rape Supportive Attitude Scale was formally published in 1991 by Dr. Ilsa L. Lottes in the peer-reviewed article entitled “Belief systems: Sexuality and rape”, appearing in the Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality (Volume 4, Issue 2, pages 37–59). The instrument was subsequent republished in standard measurement compendiums, including the Handbook of Sexuality-Related Measures.

Copyright and Permitted Usage: The scale is considered an open psychometric instrument accessible for scholarly, empirical, educational, and scientific research purposes without royalty fees, provided proper academic citation is accorded to the original author. Researchers planning large-scale institutional implementations, adaptations, or commercial translations may direct scholarly correspondence to:

Dr. Ilsa L. Lottes
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250, USA
Email: [email protected]

References

• Barnett, N. J., & Feild, H. S. (1977). Sex differences in university students’ attitudes toward rape. Journal of College Student Personnel, 18(2), 93–96.
• Bell, S. T., Kuriloff, P. J., Lottes, I. L., Nathanson, J., Judge, T., & Fogelson-Turet, K. (1992). Rape callousness in college freshmen: An empirical investigation of a sociocultural model of aggression towards women. Journal of College Student Development, 33(5), 454–461.
• Bell, S. T., Lottes, I. L., & Kuriloff, P. J. (1995). Understanding rape callousness in college students: Results of a panel study. Unpublished manuscript, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
• Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against our will: Men, women and rape. Simon & Schuster.
• Burt, M. R. (1980). Cultural myths and supports for rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(2), 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.38.2.217
• Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Aldine Publishing Company.
• Koss, M. P. (1981). Hidden rape on a university campus (Grant No. R01MH31618). National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, MD.
• Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-3139-1
• Lottes, I. L. (1991). Belief systems: Sexuality and rape. Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, 4(2), 37–59. https://doi.org/10.1300/J056v04n02_03
• Marolla, J., & Scully, D. (1982). Attitudes toward women, violence, and rape: A comparison of convicted rapists and other felons (Grant No. R01MH33013-01A1). National Institute of Mental Health, Rockville, MD.
• Mosher, D. L., & Sirkin, M. (1984). Measuring a macho personality constellation. Journal of Research in Personality, 18(2), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(84)90026-6
• Russell, D. E. H. (1975). The politics of rape: The victim’s perspective. Stein and Day.
• Wheeler, J. R., & Utigard, C. N. (1984, June). Gender, stereotyping, rape attitudes, and acceptance of interpersonal violence. Paper presented at the combined annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex and the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists, Boston, MA.
• Williams, J. E., & Holmes, K. A. (1981). The second assault: Rape and public attitudes. Greenwood Press.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)