Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale (SGABS)

Abstract

The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale (SGABS) is a widely utilized 26-item psychometric instrument designed to measure irrational and rational beliefs within the operational architecture of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT), formulated originally by Albert Ellis. Developed by Lindner, Kirkby, Wertheim, and Birch (1999) as an abbreviated, psychometrically refined version of the General Attitude and Belief Scale (GABS), the instrument evaluates irrational cognitive processes across diverse thematic domains while avoiding the affective confounding that plagued earlier measures of irrational thinking. The scale assesses seven distinct dimensions: Need for Achievement, Need for Approval, Need for Comfort, Demand for Fairness, Self-Downing, Other-Downing, and Rationality. Each item is rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly Agree). Psychometric investigations consistently confirm strong construct, convergent, and discriminant validity, demonstrating robust associations with psychopathological distress measures, including the Beck Depression Inventory and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The SGABS exhibits high internal consistency, with total irrationality Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically exceeding .85 and subscale reliabilities generally spanning .70 to .88 across clinical, non-clinical, and cross-cultural cohorts. Structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrate that while a seven-factor correlated model offers optimal item-level representation, a hierarchical or bifactor structure—featuring a primary global irrationality factor alongside specialized content dimensions—provides an empirically sound basis for clinical assessment and empirical research in cognitive-behavioral paradigms.

Keywords

Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale, SGABS, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, REBT, Irrational Beliefs, Cognitive Vulnerability, Self-Downing, Frustration Tolerance, Psychometrics, Cognitive Assessment

Authors

The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale was developed and validated by:

• Helen Lindner, Ph.D. – School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Robert J. Kirkby, Ph.D. – Department of Behavioural Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Eleanor H. Wertheim, Ph.D. – School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
• Phillip Birch, B.Sc. (Hons) – Department of Behavioural Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Correspondence regarding the foundational validation studies of the SGABS was historically directed to the School of Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale (SGABS) is to quantify irrational and rational beliefs central to the etiology, maintenance, and treatment of psychological distress according to the theoretical model of Albert Ellis’s Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Earlier self-report inventories designed to evaluate REBT constructs—such as the Irrational Beliefs Test (IBT; Jones, 1968) and the Rational Behavior Inventory (RBI; Shorkey & Whiteman, 1977)—were severely criticized in psychometric literature for confounding irrational beliefs with emotional distress and psychiatric symptom states. Because items on these older scales frequently referenced negative affective reactions (e.g., “I get depressed when…” or “I worry about…”), correlations between irrational beliefs and measures of anxiety or depression were artificially inflated due to shared content variance.

The original General Attitude and Belief Scale (GABS; Bernard, 1998; Burgess, 1990; DiGiuseppe et al., 1988) addressed this critical limitation by phrasing items strictly in terms of cognitive attitudes and evaluative philosophies without embedding emotional consequences. However, the full-length GABS, spanning 66 to 72 items depending on the version, presented significant practical limitations for routine clinical intake, repeated-measures therapy monitoring, and large-scale epidemiological field research. The SGABS was constructed specifically to:

• Provide a brief, efficient, and psychometrically sound measurement tool consisting of 26 items that minimize participant fatigue and administrative burden.
• Distinguish clearly between cognitive belief processes (demandingness, awfulizing, low frustration tolerance, and global evaluation of human worth) across specific situational content areas (achievement, affiliation, comfort, and equitable treatment).
• Maintain pure cognitive measurement by excluding affective symptom descriptions, thereby permitting unbiased empirical investigations into the causal relations between irrational beliefs and affective disturbance.
• Offer mental health practitioners and clinical researchers a sensitive metric to track cognitive change during the course of cognitive-behavioral therapies.

Psychological Construct

The SGABS operationalizes core constructs of the REBT cognitive model. In REBT theory, irrational beliefs are rigid, absolutistic, non-empirical, and dysfunctional evaluations of reality that thwart goal attainment and engender maladaptive emotional consequences (e.g., clinical depression, generalized anxiety, unhealthy rage, guilt). Conversely, rational beliefs are flexible, empirical, logical, and non-dogmatic preferences that foster emotional resilience and adaptive functional behaviors.

The SGABS delineates these beliefs across seven correlated psychological subscales:

• Need for Achievement (4 items): Reflects demandingness, awfulizing, and low frustration tolerance specifically directed toward personal performance, success, and competency. Individuals scoring high on this dimension view failure or mediocrity on personally meaningful tasks as unacceptable catastrophes (e.g., Item 1: “It’s unbearable to fail at important things and I can’t stand not succeeding at them”).
• Need for Approval (3 items): Measures dogmatic demands for social validation, interpersonal acceptance, and universal liking. Individuals holding these beliefs insist that significant others must approve of them, construing rejection or disapproval as intolerable (e.g., Item 23: “I must be liked and accepted by people I want to like me and I will not accept their not liking me”).
• Need for Comfort (4 items): Captures low frustration tolerance (LFT) and catastrophizing centered on physical or psychological ease. It reflects an intolerance for tension, bodily discomfort, subjective strain, and daily hassles, embodying the conviction that existence must be easy and stress-free (e.g., Item 5: “I can’t stand being tense or nervous and I think tension is unbearable”).
• Demand for Fairness (4 items): Encompasses dogmatic requirements that interpersonal interactions and life conditions conform strictly to personal standards of justice, consideration, and reciprocity. High scorers perceive unfairness or interpersonal disrespect as intolerable and catastrophic (e.g., Item 14: “I cannot stand being treated unfairly and I think unfairness is unbearable”).
• Self-Downing (4 items): Operationalizes global negative self-evaluation and unconditional self-condemnation. Rather than rating specific behaviors or performances, the individual assigns a global pejorative rating to their totality as a human being upon encountering adversity, interpersonal rejection, or task failure (e.g., Item 10: “If I do not perform well at tasks that are important to me it is because I am a worthless bad person”).
• Other-Downing (3 items): Captures global other-condemnation, wherein other human beings are evaluated pejoratively and written off as wholly worthless, evil, or hopeless on the basis of their unfair, inconsiderate, or disrespectful actions (e.g., Item 15: “I believe that if a person treats me very unfairly they are bad and worthless”).
• Rationality (4 items): Measures flexible, non-absolutistic cognitive appraisals, preferential thinking, and unconditional self-acceptance (USA). This dimension reflects psychological resilience, where individuals acknowledge desires for success, approval, and justice while recognizing that their fundamental worth remains intact even when desires go unfulfilled (e.g., Item 4: “I have worth as a person even if I do not perform well at tasks that are important to me”).

Theoretical Framework

The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale is grounded in the theoretical framework of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), specifically the ABC model of personality and psychological disturbance formulated by Albert Ellis. According to the ABC framework:

• A (Activating Event): An external circumstance, internal stimulus, memory, or future anticipation encountered by the individual.
• B (Belief System): The evaluative cognitions the individual uses to interpret and appraise the Activating Event. These beliefs exist along a continuum from flexible, preferential, and functional (rational) to rigid, absolutistic, and dysfunctional (irrational).
• C (Emotional and Behavioral Consequences): The affective, physiological, and behavioral outcomes directly generated not by the activating event itself, but by the cognitive beliefs mediated at point B.

Ellis posited that irrational beliefs are governed by four primary cognitive processes, which intersect across various content domains:

1. Demandingness (“Musturbation”): The core absolute cognitive process expressed through rigid demands, “musts,” “shoulds,” and “oughts.”
2. Awfulizing / Catastrophizing: Evaluating negative events as 100% bad, worse than they objectively should be, and wholly catastrophic.
3. Low Frustration Tolerance (LFT / “I-Can’t-Stand-It-itis”): The subjective conviction that one cannot endure discomfort, inconvenience, or unexpected frustration.
4. Global Evaluation / Depreciation: Rating the overall worth of the self (Self-Downing), other people (Other-Downing), or the world as completely rotten or worthless based on isolated behavioral deficits or adverse occurrences.

The structural matrix of the SGABS blends these core evaluative processes with the primary domains of human striving identified by Ellis: Achievement, Affiliation (Approval), and Comfort/Fairness. Importantly, the SGABS operationalizes Ellis’s clinical conviction that healthy psychological adaptation does not stem from passive indifference, but from unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other-acceptance—constructs directly tapped by the Rationality subscale items.

Validity

The SGABS has undergone extensive psychometric validation across clinical, student, and community samples globally, consistently demonstrating strong construct, criterion-related, and convergent validity.

Construct and Factorial Validity

During its initial validation by Lindner et al. (1999), confirmatory factor analyses supported the theoretical distinction between the seven intended subscales. Items demonstrated high factor loadings onto their specified dimensions without problematic cross-loadings. Construct validity was reinforced by demonstrating that rational items formed an empirically separate construct that negatively correlated with irrational dimensions, supporting the dual-process theoretical view that rationality and irrationality are not merely opposite ends of a single continuum, but related, distinct cognitive mechanisms.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The convergent validity of the SGABS has been demonstrated through strong, statistically significant correlations with standard measures of emotional and behavioral disorders:

• Depressive Symptomatology: Significant positive correlations exist between the SGABS Total Irrationality score, the Self-Downing subscale, and the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), with coefficients typically ranging from r = .50 to .68 (Lindner et al., 1999; MacInnes, 2003). Self-Downing consistently emerges as the strongest cognitive predictor of depressive symptom severity.
• Anxiety and Neuroticism: Total irrationality, Need for Comfort, and Need for Achievement correlate significantly with trait anxiety measured by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; r = .45 to .62) and the Neuroticism domain of the NEO Personality Inventory.
• Anger and Externalizing Traits: The Demand for Fairness and Other-Downing subscales demonstrate unique convergent validity with measures of hostility, trait anger (e.g., the State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory [STAXI]), and interpersonal conflict.
• Discriminant Validity: Unlike earlier instruments such as the IBT, the SGABS demonstrates superior discriminant validity by showing non-significant or weak correlations with measures of unrelated constructs (e.g., social desirability, general cognitive ability) while retaining pure cognitive variance unpolluted by somatic and affective symptom items.

Reliability

The psychometric stability and internal consistency of the SGABS have been established across multiple independent studies spanning clinical, collegiate, and international populations.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational validation study by Lindner et al. (1999), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the subscales demonstrated strong internal consistency across samples:

• Need for Achievement: α = .79
• Need for Approval: α = .79
• Need for Comfort: α = .80
• Demand for Fairness: α = .80
• Self-Downing: α = .83
• Other-Downing: α = .83
• Rationality: α = .84

Replication studies have confirmed these parameters. For instance, Douglas (2015) reported internal consistency estimates of α = .877 (Achievement), α = .714 (Approval), α = .812 (Comfort), α = .720 (Fairness), α = .832 (Self-Downing), α = .616 (Other-Downing), α = .735 (Rationality), and α = .846 for the Total Irrationality composite score. Cross-cultural adaptations (e.g., Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Turkish versions) have mirrored these reliability coefficients, typically reporting composite alpha values ranging between .85 and .91 for global irrationality.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability assessments conducted over intervals spanning two to eight weeks have yielded test-retest reliability coefficients ranging from r = .76 to .88 for the total scale, and from .68 to .82 for the specific subscales, confirming that the SGABS measures stable cognitive-evaluative structures rather than transient emotional states.

Factor Analysis

The dimensional structure of the SGABS was derived through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) on an initial pool of items selected from the 66-item GABS, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to verify the latent structure.

Exploratory and Confirmatory Models

Lindner et al. (1999) tested several competing structural models using maximum likelihood estimation:

1. Unidimensional Model: A single general factor accounting for all 26 items yielded unacceptable goodness-of-fit indices (χ²/df > 4.5, RMSEA > .10, CFI < .75).
2. Process-Only vs. Content-Only Models: Grouping items strictly by process (e.g., demandingness vs. global evaluation) or strictly by content (e.g., achievement vs. fairness) produced inferior fit relative to the integrated model.
3. Seven-Factor Intercorrelated Model: The seven-factor solution—separating Achievement, Approval, Comfort, Fairness, Self-Downing, Other-Downing, and Rationality—demonstrated superior fit (χ²/df < 2.1, RMSEA = .048 to .056, CFI > .92, TLI > .90). All 26 items demonstrated substantial standardized factor loadings onto their designated latent constructs, with loadings generally falling between .52 and .84.

Hierarchical and Bifactor Considerations

Subsequent psychometric examinations (e.g., MacInnes, 2003; Trip, 2006) investigated whether a higher-order General Irrationality factor explains the correlations among the six irrational belief subscales. Hierarchical CFA models show that the six irrational factors load substantially (loadings from .55 to .82) onto a second-order General Irrationality factor. Bifactor modeling has supported the simultaneous presence of a common global irrationality dimension and unique specific variance attributable to individual thematic subscales, justifying the computation of both a total irrationality composite score and individual domain scores in clinical research.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale (SGABS) is formatted as an objective, self-administered questionnaire.

• Item Count: 26 items
• Response Format: 5-point Likert scale scored as follows:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Neutral
  • 4 = Agree
  • 5 = Strongly Agree
• Administration Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically aged 14 and older) across clinical, educational, occupational, and research settings
• Subscale Item Composition:
  • Need for Achievement: Items 1, 11, 18, 20 (4 items; range 4–20)
  • Need for Approval: Items 6, 23, 25 (3 items; range 3–15)
  • Need for Comfort: Items 3, 5, 16, 17 (4 items; range 4–20)
  • Demand for Fairness: Items 2, 12, 14, 21 (4 items; range 4–20)
  • Self-Downing: Items 7, 10, 13, 22 (4 items; range 4–20)
  • Other-Downing: Items 8, 15, 26 (3 items; range 3–15)
  • Rationality: Items 4, 9, 19, 24 (4 items; range 4–20)
• Scoring Protocols:
  • Subscale Scores: Sum the item ratings for each designated subscale. Higher scores indicate greater endorsement of that specific belief system.
  • Total Irrationality Score: Sum the 22 items representing the six irrational subscales (Items 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26). The total score ranges from 22 to 110, with higher scores reflecting elevated levels of general cognitive irrationality.
  • Rationality Subscale Handling: Items 4, 9, 19, and 24 represent rational beliefs and are scored separately (range 4–20). They are not included in the Total Irrationality sum, nor are they reverse-coded into the composite irrationality score, maintaining the theoretical distinction between rational and irrational processes.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale was originally published in 1999 by Helen Lindner, Robert J. Kirkby, Eleanor H. Wertheim, and Phillip Birch in the peer-reviewed journal Cognitive Therapy and Research (Volume 23, Issue 6, pp. 651–663).

The instrument is considered open-access for academic, empirical research, and non-commercial clinical assessment purposes, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and citation are accorded to Lindner et al. (1999). No commercial licensing fee is required for academic or dissertation research. Commercial adaptation, inclusion within monetized proprietary digital platforms, or distribution in commercial software requires prior permission from the copyright holder (Springer Science+Business Media) or the originating authors.

References

• Bernard, M. E. (1998). Validation of the General Attitude and Belief Scale. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 16(3), 183–196. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024925700778
• Burgess, C. A. (1990). The development of the General Attitude and Belief Scale (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
• DiGiuseppe, R., Leaf, R., Exner, T., & Robin, M. W. (1988). The development of a measure of irrational thinking. In World Congress of Behavior Therapy, Edinburgh, Scotland.
• Douglas, M. (2015). A psychometric evaluation of the Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale in adult mental health populations. Nurse Researcher, 10(4), 45–58.
• Ellis, A. (1994). Reason and emotion in psychotherapy (Revised ed.). Birch Lane Press.
• Jones, R. G. (1968). A factor measure of Ellis’ irrational belief system with personality and malajustment correlates (Doctoral dissertation, Texas Technological College). Dissertation Abstracts International, 29, 4379B.
• Lindner, H., Kirkby, R., Wertheim, E., & Birch, P. (1999). A brief assessment of irrational thinking: The Shortened General Attitude and Belief Scale. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 23(6), 651–663. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018741009293
• MacInnes, D. L. (2003). Evaluating an assessment tool to measure irrational beliefs. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 42(2), 183–197. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466503321903599
• Mould, J. (2014). A programme to promote internal resiliency among female adolescents: A cognitive-behavioural approach (Doctoral dissertation, University of the Free State). Available at: http://etd.uovs.ac.za/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-08072014-121128/unrestricted/MouldJ.pdf
• Shorkey, C. T., & Whiteman, V. L. (1977). Development of the Rational Behavior Inventory: Initial validity and reliability. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 37(2), 527–534. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316447703700232
• Trip, S., Vernon, A., & McMahon, J. (2007). Effectiveness of a rational-emotive education program for challenging behaviors in youth. Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, 25(4), 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10942-006-0052-1

Items of the Scale