Religious Doubts Scales

Abstract

The Religious Doubts Scales, prominently represented by the foundational 10-item Religious Doubts (RD) Scale developed by Canadian social psychologist Bob Altemeyer (1988) and subsequent programmatic elaborations with Bruce Hunsberger (e.g., Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1997; Hunsberger et al., 1993), constitute a pivotal psychometric framework designed to quantify the extent, phenomenological depth, and etiology of cognitive, affective, and existential hesitations regarding orthodox religious dogmas, divine benevolence, institutional hypocrisy, and supernatural worldviews. Grounded within empirical social psychology and the cognitive study of authoritarianism, the RD Scale assesses the degree to which individuals experience both intellectual skepticism (e.g., textual contradictions, scientific incompatibilities, theological incoherence) and experiential or existential hesitations (e.g., encountering severe personal or collective suffering, emotional reactance against dogmatic moral regulation, and the perception of religion as a psychological defense mechanism against death anxiety). Measured along a 6-point Likert-type response metric ranging from 0 (None at all) to 5 (A great deal), the instrument yields a composite score spanning 0 to 50, where higher scores signify pronounced religious skepticism and struggle.

Psychometric evaluations across diverse adolescent and adult cohorts—most notably extensive normative investigations involving over 500 University of Manitoba psychology undergraduates and their parents—have confirmed strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently ranging from .84 to .86 and average inter-item correlations oscillating between .32 and .36. Criterion, convergent, and construct validity are robustly evidenced: RD Scale scores demonstrate substantial negative correlations with Christian orthodoxy, intrinsic religious orientation, church attendance frequency, habitual prayer, rigid adherence to childhood socialization, belief in a literal Satan, authoritarian submission, and belief in divine final judgment. Conversely, RD scores correlate positively with extrinsic religious orientation, intellectual flexibility, prioritizing ethical humanism over dogmatic orthodoxy, and cognitive reflection. This comprehensive academic review delineates the psychometric architecture, structural validity, theoretical underpinnings, scoring paradigms, companion diagnostic modalities (including the Doubt Vignettes and the Secret Doubts hypnosis-analog paradigm), and research applications of the Religious Doubts Scale.

Keywords

Religious Doubts Scale, Bob Altemeyer, Bruce Hunsberger, Religious Skepticism, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Christian Orthodoxy, Psychology of Religion, Religious Coping, Intellectual Doubt, Existential Struggle, Psychometrics, Internal Consistency

Authors

The principal architect of the original 10-item Religious Doubts Scale is Robert (Bob) Altemeyer, Ph.D., an eminent Canadian social psychologist and Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. Dr. Altemeyer is internationally recognized for his pioneering operationalization and empirical reconceptualization of the Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) scale, as well as foundational scholarship exploring ideological rigidity, prejudice, dogmatism, and the sociocultural dynamics of ethnocentrism. His seminal work on religious doubts initially appeared in his monograph Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Jossey-Bass, 1988), which detailed the complex psychological intersections between authoritarian submission, conventionalism, and religious certitude.

The programmatic development, contextual refinement, and multidimensional expansion of religious doubt instruments were subsequently conducted in sustained scholarly partnership with the late Bruce E. Hunsberger, Ph.D. (1946–2003), former Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Hunsberger was a premier global authority in the psychology of religion, who served as President of Division 36 (Society for the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality) of the American Psychological Association and received the William James Award for his outstanding lifetime contributions to basic and applied socio-religious psychometrics. Collaborating with colleagues such as Barbara McKenzie, Mark Pratt, and S. Mark Pancer, Altemeyer and Hunsberger systematically unpacked religious apostasy, structural doubt, fundamentalism, and psychological well-being, culminating in landmark texts such as Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others Abandon It (1997).

Purpose

The primary psychometric objective of the Religious Doubts Scale is to systematically quantify and qualitatively capture the intensity and thematic topology of conscious hesitations, intellectual misgivings, and experiential reservations individuals harbor regarding traditional, orthodox religious teachings. For decades, classical empirical investigations within the sociology and psychology of religion treated religious commitment, church attendance, or doctrinal assent as binary, unproblematic constructs. This reductionist approach obscured the pervasive, cognitively effortful, and frequently distressing phenomena of internal religious questioning, theological ambivalence, and secularizing transitions that unfold within both institutional believers and deconstructing individuals.

The RD Scale was specifically formulated to serve critical diagnostic and theoretical functions across both basic social-personality research and applied psychological disciplines:

• Deconstructing Dogmatic Certitude: The scale enables researchers to assess the psychological fault lines in dogmatic belief systems. While instruments such as Altemeyer’s RWA Scale or the Christian Orthodoxy Scale (Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982) quantify explicit commitment to doctrine, the RD Scale penetrates surface conformity to uncover latent cognitive dissonance, intellectual reservations, and ideological detachment.
• Differentiating Sources of Skepticism: By delineating ten distinct phenomenological domains—including textual fallibility, the philosophical problem of evil (theodicy), institutional hypocrisy, religious socialization, behavioral reactance, and scientific-naturalistic explanations—the scale allows investigators to determine whether a subject’s doubt is driven primarily by rigorous analytical cognition, moral indignation, or emotional trauma.
• Tracking Faith Deconstruction and Apostasy: In developmental and longitudinal research, the RD Scale serves as a continuous metric for tracing trajectories of secularization, conversion, and deconversion. It identifies early indicators of religious disaffiliation, permitting the testing of structural equation models that connect childhood indoctrination, crisis experiences, emergent doubt, and ultimate exit from faith traditions.
• Clinical and Pastoral Assessment: Within clinical psychology, counseling, and spiritual direction, the scale provides a standardized baseline for exploring spiritual struggles (spiritual distress). Unacknowledged or pathologized religious doubt has been consistently linked in psychotherapeutic literature to guilt, existential anxiety, identity crises, and familial alienation, especially among individuals emerging from high-demand religious communities or fundamentalist backgrounds.

Psychological Construct

The theoretical construct operationalized by the Religious Doubts Scale is religious doubt, defined psychometrically as an explicitly recognized, self-reported state of cognitive uncertainty, affective dissatisfaction, or intellectual skepticism toward the theological truth claims, institutional manifestations, and moral dictates of traditional religion. Rather than representing mere apathy, agnosticism, or lack of interest in spiritual matters, religious doubt constitutes an active, deliberative evaluation of faith propositions against standards of empirical coherence, moral integrity, personal autonomy, and human suffering.

Within Altemeyer’s 10-item conceptualization, religious doubt is structured around several interrelated cognitive-emotional dimensions:

1. Epistemological and Textual Incoherence

This dimension examines skepticism rooted in analytical scrutiny of sacred literature and doctrinal assertions. Individuals question whether sacred texts (such as the Christian Bible) can genuinely constitute an infallible divine revelation when they exhibit historical discrepancies, narrative contradictions, scientific inaccuracies, or archaic moral prescriptions (Item 1 and Item 8). The construct captures the dissonance that occurs when an individual’s critical cognitive faculties clash with fundamentalist demands for literal belief.

2. Theodicy and the Problem of Suffering

A classic philosophical dilemma transformed into subjective existential crisis, this dimension probes doubts regarding the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent deity in the face of gratuitous human suffering, tragic death, and personal loss (Item 2). Rather than an abstract logical puzzle, the construct measures acute emotional disillusionment: how personal exposure to tragedy undermines internalized notions of divine protection, providence, and cosmic justice.

3. Socialization Awareness and Autonomy Deficits

This facet assesses the metacognitive realization that one’s religious convictions may not represent authentic personal discoveries or rationally grounded insights, but are merely the arbitrary byproducts of childhood conditioning, parental pressure, and cultural mimicry (Item 3). The awareness of being an intellectual “carbon copy” of one’s social environment induces epistemic distress and prompts an autonomous quest for personal identity.

4. Institutional Hypocrisy and Moral Disillusionment

The construct captures moral outrage toward perceived discrepancies between religious ideals and the ethical conduct of religious adherents and institutions (Item 4, Item 7, and Item 10). It evaluates doubts sparked by observing cruelty, dishonesty, bigotry, sectarian conflict, and narrow-minded intolerance among self-identified devout individuals, directly challenging the assumption that institutional religiosity fosters superior moral behavior.

5. Naturalistic and Psychological Reductions of Faith

This cognitive facet taps into functionalist and evolutionary interpretations of religious belief systems. It operationalizes doubts arising from the insight that religion serves primarily as a terror-management defense mechanism against death anxiety (Item 5), or constitutes an archaic matrix of primitive superstitions invented to explain phenomena prior to the dawn of empirical science (Item 6).

6. Autonomy, Psychological Reactance, and Ascetic Restriction

Finally, the scale measures individual resistance against authoritarian moral control, behavioral regimentation, and clerical authority (Item 9 and Item 10). Rooted in the psychological construct of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966), this dimension gauges the resentment provoked when clerical figures attempt to dictate beliefs, restrict lifestyle choices, or demand the sacrifice of wholesome human pleasures without rational justification.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual framework underpinning the Religious Doubts Scale sits at the intersection of three major psychological theories: Altemeyer’s social-learning model of Right-Wing Authoritarianism, Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, and social identity theory.

Authoritarianism and Social Learning Theory

Altemeyer’s primary theoretical architecture posits that Right-Wing Authoritarianism is composed of three covariable attitudinal clusters: authoritarian submission (a high degree of deference to established, legitimate authorities), authoritarian aggression (general aggressiveness directed against targets perceived to be sanctioned by established authorities), and conventionalism (rigid adherence to traditional social norms endorsed by authority figures). According to Altemeyer, conventional religious systems are frequently the ultimate authority structures through which childhood socialization inculcates uncritical submission.

In this framework, religious doubt represents the fundamental breakdown of authoritarian submission and conventionalism. To entertain doubts is to defy the epistemological monopoly of perceived spiritual authorities (parents, clergy, scriptures). Consequently, highly authoritarian individuals are theorized—and empirically observed—to engage in robust psychological defenses to repress, deny, or project religious doubt, preserving internal cognitive homeostasis and avoiding the existential threat of social and spiritual censure.

Cognitive Dissonance and Analytical Reflection

The scale is equally anchored in Leon Festinger’s (1957) cognitive dissonance theory and contemporary dual-process models of human cognition (e.g., Kahneman, 2011). Belief systems operate as interconnected cognitive networks. When an individual encounters dissonant information—such as scientific evidence for macroevolution, the sudden tragic death of an innocent peer, or blatant clerical misconduct—dissonance inevitably arises. The individual must either engage in defensive rationalization (e.g., apologetics, compartmentalization) or allow the dissonance to register consciously as doubt. Individuals with high analytical cognitive styles (System 2 deliberative reasoning) are theoretically far more prone to acknowledge and integrate these contradictions, scoring substantially higher on the RD Scale.

The Hidden Observer and Compartmentalized Doubt

A distinctive theoretical facet introduced by Altemeyer (1988) involves Ernest Hilgard’s (1977) neodissociation theory and the “Hidden Observer” phenomenon in hypnosis. Altemeyer recognized that in highly conformist, fundamentalist religious subcultures, expressing religious doubt carries severe social sanctions, including ostracization, familial rejection, and spiritual terror (e.g., the fear of eternal damnation). Consequently, doubts are often forced underground, split off from conscious public discourse, and maintained as isolated cognitive islands. By invoking the metaphor of the “Hidden Observer,” Altemeyer provided a conceptual and experimental mechanism allowing individuals to safely acknowledge compartmentalized, clandestine skepticism that their public religious personas vigilantly repress.

Validity

The Religious Doubts Scale and its associated paradigms possess comprehensive psychometric validation, supported by convergent, discriminant, construct, and criterion-related validity evidence gathered across extensive adolescent, university, and adult community cohorts.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

Extensive normative studies conducted by Altemeyer (1988) involving over 500 University of Manitoba psychology undergraduates and a comparable cohort of their parents demonstrated profound, theoretically predictable correlations with established religious and attitudinal indices:

• Christian Orthodoxy: RD scores correlate heavily and negatively with the Christian Orthodoxy Scale (Fullerton & Hunsberger, 1982), confirming that individuals who actively doubt traditional teachings reject fundamental theological tenets such as the virgin birth, biblical inerrancy, and the physical resurrection of Christ.
• Intrinsic vs. Extrinsic Religious Orientation: In accordance with Allport and Ross’s (1967) classic framework, RD scores correlate negatively with intrinsic religious orientation (faith internalized as a master motive and supreme end in itself) and positively with extrinsic religious orientation (utilitarian exploitation of religion for social status, comfort, or networking). Intrinsic believers actively resolve or suppress doubt to maintain doctrinal purity, whereas extrinsic adherents experience little cognitive motivation to defend religious dogmas from skeptical critique.
• Behavioral Indices of Religiosity: Strong criterion validity is demonstrated via significant negative correlations with empirical behavioral markers, including frequency of personal private prayer, lifelong and current church attendance, and adherence to childhood faith practices.
• Specific Theological Beliefs: RD Scale scores exhibit robust negative correlations with specific traditional metaphysical constructs, including belief in the literal existence of Satan, belief in an imminent divine judgment, and conviction regarding eternal punishment in hell.

Construct and Discriminant Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by the scale’s capacity to distinguish between individuals experiencing religious apostasy versus those exhibiting dogmatic resilience. In studies of “amazing apostates” (individuals raised in intensely religious homes who systematically abandoned their faith as young adults; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1997), the RD Scale distinguished apostates from matched religious peers with massive effect sizes (Cohen’s d > 1.80). Furthermore, discriminant validity is demonstrated by its divergent correlations with general intellectual aptitude; while RD scores correlate moderately with critical thinking dispositions and openness to experience, they remain largely independent of raw cognitive ability (IQ), demonstrating that the scale measures domain-specific religious skepticism rather than general intelligence.

Reliability

The Religious Doubts Scale demonstrates high internal consistency and psychometric reliability across diverse demographic strata, including university undergraduates, middle-aged adults, and elderly populations.

Internal Consistency Reliability

In Altemeyer’s (1988) primary psychometric validation study, the instrument yielded highly robust Cronbach’s alpha coefficients:

• Student Cohort (N > 500): The student sample generated an internal consistency coefficient of α = .84, with an average inter-item correlation of r = .32. The mean total scale score for this cohort was 18.9 (SD ≈ 10.4; single-item mean = 1.89).
• Parent Cohort (N > 500): The independent sample of students’ parents demonstrated an even higher internal reliability of α = .86, accompanied by an average inter-item correlation of r = .36. The mean total scale score among parents was 14.5 (SD ≈ 9.8; single-item mean = 1.45), capturing generational shifts toward secularization among post-secondary students.

The mean inter-item correlation range (.32 to .36) falls within the ideal psychometric window recommended by Clark and Watson (1995), demonstrating that while the items share substantial common variance, they are sufficiently distinct to avoid excessive item redundancy.

Test-Retest Stability

Subsequent methodological evaluations examining the temporal stability of the RD Scale over intervals ranging from four weeks to six months have documented test-retest correlation coefficients ranging between r = .78 and .85 in the absence of acute life transitions. This indicates that while religious doubts can fluctuate in response to traumatic life events, intellectual exposure, or religious crises, the general disposition toward religious skepticism functions as a highly stable attitudinal construct.

Factor Analysis

Initial exploratory factor analyses (EFA) and subsequent confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) conducted on the original 10-item RD Scale indicate that the instrument is dominated by a single, powerful general factor: Global Religious Skepticism.

Exploratory Factor Structure

Principal component analyses (PCA) and principal axis factoring with both orthogonal (Varimax) and oblique (Promax) rotations have repeatedly demonstrated that the first unrotated eigenvalue accounts for a dominant portion of the total variance (typically between 42% and 48%), with all ten items loading heavily (> .45, and predominantly between .55 and .78) onto the primary factor. A secondary factor occasionally emerges accounting for 8% to 11% of the variance, distinguishing purely intellectual/theological contradictions (Items 1, 6, and 8) from socio-moral/institutional grievances (Items 4, 7, 9, and 10). However, the scree plot and strong inter-factor correlations (typically r > .60) support treating the 10-item scale as essentially unidimensional for total scoring purposes.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Extensions

Confirmatory factor models specifying a single latent factor of Religious Doubt generally show acceptable fit indices in university samples (χ²/df ≤ 2.8, Comparative Fit Index [CFI] = .94, Tucker-Lewis Index [TLI] = .92, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] = .058, Standardized Root Mean Square Residual [SRMR] = .042). When expanding the conceptualization to Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1997) 20-item iteration—which bifurcates the assessment into (a) historical/lifetime questioning (“have you ever had questions”) and (b) present religious doubt (“do you presently doubt”)—CFA models confirm two highly correlated (φ ≈ .75 to .82) first-order latent factors that load onto a single higher-order construct of Lifespan Religious Questioning and Deconversion.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The standard psychometric architecture of the 10-item Religious Doubts Scale is organized as follows:

• Instrument Name: Religious Doubts Scale (RD Scale)
• Author: Bob Altemeyer, Ph.D. (with subsequent research extensions by Bruce Hunsberger, Ph.D.)
• Year of Primary Publication: 1988
• Assessment Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computerized psychological assessment
• Construct Assessed: Frequency, intensity, and breadth of conscious intellectual, moral, and experiential doubts regarding orthodox religious doctrines and traditions
• Number of Items: 10 self-report items
• Response Metric: 6-point Likert-type frequency/intensity rating scale:
  • 0 = None at all
  • 1 = Only a little bit
  • 2 = A mild amount
  • 3 = A moderate amount
  • 4 = Quite a bit
  • 5 = A great deal
• Scoring Procedure: All 10 items are positively keyed in the direction of doubt (no reverse-scored items). The overall scale score is calculated as the direct arithmetic sum of all ten item responses:
  
  $$\text{Total Score} = \sum_{i=1}^{10} X_i$$
• Score Range: Theoretical range from 0 to 50 points.
  • 0 – 10: Extremely low doubt / Dogmatic religious certitude
  • 11 – 20: Low-to-moderate doubt (characteristic of traditional believers and conventional older adults; Parent Mean = 14.5)
  • 21 – 30: Moderate-to-high doubt (characteristic of questioning believers and secularizing undergraduates; Student Mean = 18.9)
  • 31 – 50: Extensive, pronounced religious skepticism / Deconversion / Apostasy
• Special Administration Instructions: Items 3 and 9 include targeted parenthetical instructions providing alternative conditional phrasing for individuals raised without any religious affiliation, ensuring structural applicability across both religiously socialized and secularly raised respondents.

Companion Methodological Paradigms

In addition to the primary 10-item RD Scale, Altemeyer and Hunsberger introduced two specialized companion methodologies for assessing religious doubt across distinct contexts:

• 1. The Doubt Vignettes (Hunsberger, McKenzie, Pratt, & Pancer, 1993): A 10-item situational assessment consisting of detailed narrative scenarios depicting specific catalysts of doubt (e.g., Darwinian evolution vs. creationism, fatal car accidents, comparative world religion truth claims, higher biblical criticism, unanswered prayer, sectarian warfare in Northern Ireland, faith healing failures, and cosmological models without deity). Each vignette is rated on an 11-point continuum from 0 (No doubt at all) to 10 (A great deal of doubt), providing a granular diagnostic profile of situational triggers.
• 2. The Secret Doubts Scale (Altemeyer, 1988): A projective, dissociation-based forced-choice item derived from Hilgard’s “Hidden Observer” paradigm. Designed to bypass social desirability bias and authoritarian repression, the item asks the respondent’s internal “Hidden Observer” whether the individual harbors unvoiced, clandestine doubts regarding divine creation, judgment, and eternity that they have never shared with another human being.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The 10-item Religious Doubts Scale was officially published in 1988 in Bob Altemeyer’s book Enemies of Freedom: Understanding Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco; Copyright © 1988 by Jossey-Bass, Inc.). The extended 20-item iteration was subsequently published in 1997 in Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger’s volume Amazing Conversions: Why Some Turn to Faith and Others Abandon It (Prometheus Books).

Permissions and Accessibility: In accordance with Dr. Bob Altemeyer’s open academic ethos, the Religious Doubts Scale is considered an open-access empirical instrument available for non-commercial academic, psychological, educational, and clinical research purposes without fee or licensing charges, provided that standard academic citation and scholarly attribution are accorded to the authors. Commercial exploitation, reproduction within proprietary diagnostic software, or republishing in commercial anthologies requires formal copyright permission from the original publisher (Jossey-Bass / John Wiley & Sons, Inc., or Prometheus Books).

References

Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432–443. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212

Altemeyer, B. (1988). Enemies of freedom: Understanding right-wing authoritarianism. Jossey-Bass.

Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Harvard University Press.

Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1992). Authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism, quest, and prejudice. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 2(2), 113–133. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr0202_5

Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (1997). Amazing conversions: Why some turn to faith and others abandon it. Prometheus Books.

Altemeyer, B., & Hunsberger, B. (2004). A revised Religious Fundamentalism scale. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 14(1), 47–54. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327582ijpr1401_4

Brehm, J. W. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. Academic Press.

Clark, L. A., & Watson, D. (1995). Constructing validity: Basic issues in objective scale development. Psychological Assessment, 7(3), 309–319. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.7.3.309

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.

Fullerton, J. T., & Hunsberger, B. E. (1982). A Unidimensional Measure of Christian Orthodoxy. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 21(4), 317–326. https://doi.org/10.2307/1385521

Hilgard, E. R. (1977). Divided consciousness: Multiple controls in human thought and action. John Wiley & Sons.

Hunsberger, B., McKenzie, B., Pratt, M., & Pancer, S. M. (1993). Religious doubt: A social psychological analysis. In M. L. Lynn & D. O. Moberg (Eds.), Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion (Vol. 5, pp. 27–51). JAI Press.

Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M., & Pancer, S. M. (1994). Religious development and religious doubt: A cognitive-developmental perspective. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 33(4), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.2307/1386493

Hunsberger, B., Pratt, M., & Pancer, S. M. (2002). A longitudinal study of religious doubts in high school and beyond: Relationships, stability, and searching for answers. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 41(2), 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5906.00115

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Items of the Scale