Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale

Abstract

The Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale (ASMS), developed by social psychologist Megan R. Yost in 2010, is a psychometrically validated, multidimensional self-report instrument designed to quantify stereotypical beliefs, moral condemnation, and prejudicial attitudes directed toward individuals who engage in consensual, sexual sadomasochism (BDSM). In contemporary sexology and social psychology, sadomasochism comprises safe, sane, and consensual practices involving bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism. Despite the decriminalization and depathologization of consensual erotic role-play, practitioners encounter pervasive social stigma, systemic bias in psychological and psychiatric assessments, child custody battles, and criminalization. The ASMS was engineered to evaluate these hostile attitudes through a 23-item inventory structured across four distinct dimensions: Socially Wrong, Violence, Lack of Tolerance, and Real Life. Administered via a 7-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Disagree Strongly) to 7 (Agree Strongly), the instrument can be completed in approximately 10 minutes. The scale demonstrated robust internal consistency across an aggregated validation sample ($N = 471$), yielding subscale Cronbachu2019s alpha coefficients ranging between .78 and .92. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses verified a four-factor latent structure with model fit indices exceeding .90. Convergent and discriminant validity were confirmed via systematic correlations with right-wing authoritarianism, general sexual conservatism, homophobia, and rape myth acceptance, while multiple regression analyses verified that 58% of variance remains unique to anti-sadomasochism bias. The ASMS serves as a vital diagnostic and empirical tool for sex researchers, forensic evaluators, social scientists, and clinical trainers seeking to deconstruct biases against sexual minorities.

Keywords

Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale, ASMS, sadomasochism, BDSM, sexual prejudice, erotic minorities, social stigma, sexual conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism, psychometrics, scale validation, homophobia

Authors

The Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale was designed, developed, and validated by:

• Megan R. Yost, Ph.D. u2014 Department of Psychology, Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, United States. Correspondence regarding the instrument may be directed via institutional post (P.O. Box 1773, Carlisle, PA 17013) or via academic correspondence ([email protected]).

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale (ASMS) is to provide an empirical, standardized, and theoretically grounded measurement instrument capable of assessing prejudice, stereotypes, and moral condemnation directed toward practitioners of consensual sexual sadomasochism (SM/BDSM). Despite growing awareness in human sexuality research that sadomasochism constitutes an alternative, safe, and consensual expression of sexual orientation or erotic play (Langdridge, 2006; Taylor & Ussher, 2001; Weinberg et al., 1984), individuals engaged in SM continue to face acute institutional and interpersonal prejudice.

Historically, psychological and psychiatric communities classified sadomasochistic behaviors exclusively under the rubric of severe psychopathology, conflating consensual erotic power dynamics with nonconsensual violence, antisocial personality patterns, and paraphilic coercion. Even as modern diagnostic manuals (e.g., DSM-5 and ICD-11) have increasingly delineated between consensual BDSM interests and paraphilic disorders causing distress or nonconsensual harm, clinical settings remain rife with prejudice. Mental health clinicians frequently report feeling uncomfortable, ill-equipped, or inherently biased when treating clients engaged in SM practices (Ford & Hendrick, 2003). Such clinician biases often lead to countertransference issues, microaggressions, pathologizing unrelated presenting problems (e.g., attributing normative depression to sadomasochistic practices), and outright refusal of service (Kolmes et al., 2006).

Beyond clinical psychology, prejudicial attitudes toward SM carry devastating legal and forensic consequences. In family and domestic law, an individual’s private, consensual involvement in the BDSM subculture has routinely been weaponized in child custody disputes, where courts have wrongfully treated SM participation as prima facie evidence of parental unfitness, child abuse risk, or moral depravity (Klein & Moser, 2006). Similarly, law enforcement agencies and judicial systems have historically targeted adult, consenting individuals participating in private or semiprivate erotic bondage gatherings with charges of lewd conduct, public nudity, and aggravated assault (Ridinger, 2006; Wright, 2006).

The theoretical rationale behind creating the ASMS was to fill an absence in social scientific measurement: prior to its development, researchers lacked a dedicated, psychometrically validated tool to assess anti-SM prejudice separate from generalized homophobia or broad sexual conservatism. By providing subscale-level nuance, the ASMS allows researchers to determine whether bias against SM stems from moral disgust, fears of physical aggression, unwillingness to grant equal rights, or stereotyped assumptions that erotic roles define all daily behavior. The scale serves critical practical applications in evaluating diversity training outcomes for psychotherapists, measuring attitude change among law enforcement and legal professionals, and testing socio-psychological models of stigma reduction.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct assessed by the ASMS is prejudicial attitudes toward consensual sadomasochism and its practitioners. Rather than treating prejudice as a unidimensional continuum of generalized like or dislike, the ASMS conceptualizes anti-SM bias as a complex, multidimensional construct involving cognitive stereotypes, affective disgust, moral judgment, and behavioral discrimination. In accordance with Yost (2010), this construct is delineated into four distinct, empirically identified dimensions:

1. Socially Wrong

The Socially Wrong subscale measures the moral condemnation, socio-institutional threat, and visceral revulsion directed toward SM practitioners. It taps into the conviction that sadomasochistic behavior is fundamentally depraved, unnatural, and destructive to core social pillars such as family, religion, and the state. Items in this subscale capture explicit moralizing (e.g., endorsing that SM is “just plain wrong” or a “perversion”), affective disgust (e.g., viewing sadomasochists as “disgusting”), institutional exclusion (e.g., barring practitioners from religious communities or criminalizing adult behavior), and personal discomfort/avoidance in the presence of self-identified Dominants or Submissives. Furthermore, this dimension assesses pathologizing assumptions, such as the belief that SM involvement is incompatible with psychological health or responsible parenting.

2. Violence

The Violence dimension captures the fallacious cognitive conflation between consensual adult BDSM practices and nonconsensual interpersonal violence, abuse, and criminal predation. Individuals scoring high on this subscale endorse false narratives linking consensual power exchange to domestic violence, partner rape, stranger rape, and child sexual exploitation. This dimension embodies the societal tendency to erase the foundational boundary of consent in BDSMu2014often summarized in the community as “Safe, Sane, and Consensual” (SSC) or “Risk-Aware Consensual Kink” (RACK)u2014by falsely categorizing erotic dominance as nonconsensual aggression and sadism as malignant psychopathy.

3. Lack of Tolerance

The Lack of Tolerance subscale evaluates the refusal to grant interpersonal, moral, or legal legitimacy to sadomasochistic relationships among consenting adults. Unlike the overt hostility captured by the Socially Wrong dimension, this factor assesses the absence of progressive, affirming, and humanizing attitudes. All items on this dimension are positively worded in the original questionnaire (e.g., asserting that sadomasochists are moral, that SM can be erotic, that practitioners are ordinary individuals, and that SM should be fully legal) and are reverse-scored so that higher scores quantify a profound lack of tolerance, empathy, and acceptance.

4. Real Life

The Real Life dimension reflects cognitive stereotyping regarding the essentialized spillover of sexual role preferences into everyday, non-sexual personality traits and social functioning. This subscale measures the fallacious assumption of trait-role concordance: the belief that an individual who adopts a Submissive erotic role is universally passive, meek, and submissive in work and social life, or that an individual who adopts a Dominant erotic role is intrinsically aggressive, domineering, and hostile outside the bedroom. This construct evaluates the cognitive failure of outside observers to recognize SM as compartmentalized, contextual erotic play or consensual theater rather than a pervasive personality disorder.

Theoretical Framework

The Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale is grounded in intersecting frameworks from social psychology, sociology of deviance, and sexology. Its theoretical underpinning draws primarily upon three major conceptual paradigms: Gordon Allport’s intergroup contact theory, Gregory Herek’s model of sexual prejudice, and Gayle Rubin’s theory of the sexual hierarchy.

Allport’s Intergroup Contact Theory and Stigma

A foundational theoretical pillar of the ASMS is Gordon Allport’s (1954) seminal work on the nature of prejudice and the contact hypothesis. Allport postulated that interpersonal contact between members of different social groups under optimal conditions (equal status, common goals, institutional support, and intergroup cooperation) effectively reduces prejudice. Sadomasochism constitutes a “concealable stigma” (Frable, Platt, & Hoey, 1998)u2014an invisible identity that practitioners routinely hide to avoid social sanction, professional termination, and social ostracism. Consequently, majority populations rarely realize they have positive relationships with SM practitioners. Yost’s theoretical framework posits that individuals possessing factual knowledge about SM or having interpersonal contact (e.g., friendships with out-practitioners) exhibit lower prejudice because direct contact dissolves sensationalized stereotypes and confirms that practitioners lead well-adjusted, ethical lives.

Herek’s Paradigm of Sexual Prejudice and Institutional Stigma

The ASMS adapts Gregory M. Herek’s (1996, 2004) framework of sexual prejudice. Herek shifted academic discourse away from individualized, pathologizing terms such as “homophobia” toward sexual prejudice: defined as negative attitudes directed toward an individual because of their sexual orientation, identity, or nonconforming sexual behaviors. Yost expanded Hereku2019s logic to erotic minorities, arguing that anti-SM prejudice operates through identical social and cognitive architectures as anti-gay and anti-lesbian hostility. This hostility is maintained through three primary mechanisms: personal defense (defending self-concept against non-normative desires), social identity/in-group favoritism (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), and value-expressive functions (affirming conservative moral structures).

Rubin’s “Charmed Circle” and the Hierarchy of Sexuality

Sociologically, the scale is deeply informed by Gayle Rubin’s (1984) structural analysis of sexual stratification. Rubin theorized that modern Western societies construct a hierarchical “charmed circle” of sexuality. Within the charmed circle, acceptable sex is heterosexual, monogamous, non-commercial, procreative or affectionate, married, and private. Outside this privileged perimeter lies the “outer limits” of bad, dangerous, and pathologized sexuality: non-monogamy, commercial sex, fetishism, and sadomasochism. According to Rubin, institutions of law, medicine, and psychiatry enforce social control by morally policing the outer limits. The ASMS operationalizes this ideological policing, measuring how respondents penalize SM practitioners for deviating from heteronormative and vanilla sexual standards.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and known-groups validity of the ASMS were established through rigorous psychometric testing across multiple analytical stages (Yost, 2010), utilizing two independent empirical samples totaling 471 participants.

Concurrent and Convergent Validity

Concurrent validity was examined by correlating the ASMS and its four subscales with established psychometric inventories assessing ideological conservatism, sexual attitudes, and sexual prejudice:

• Prejudice Against Lesbians and Gay Men: All four ASMS subscales exhibited statistically significant positive correlations with validated measures of anti-gay and anti-lesbian prejudice (Herek & Capitanio, 1996), confirming that anti-SM hostility is aligned with broader expressions of sexual prejudice against erotic minorities.
• General Sexual Conservatism: The subscales demonstrated robust positive associations with measures of sexual conservatism, confirming that prejudice against SM is functionally integrated into sex-negative belief systems that reject non-reproductive or non-traditional sexualities.
• Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): The Socially Wrong subscale exhibited its strongest correlation with Bob Altemeyeru2019s Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale. This aligned with the theoretical expectation that authoritarian personalitiesu2014characterized by strict adherence to conventional norms, authoritarian submission, and moralistic aggressionu2014view SM as a direct violation of institutional and moral order.
• Rape Myth Acceptance (RMA): Critically demonstrating convergent precision, the Violence subscale was the only factor significantly correlated with measures of rape myth acceptance (e.g., victim-blaming attitudes and erroneous beliefs about sexual assault). Participants who endorsed debunked rape myths were uniquely predisposed to endorse statements equating consensual SM with nonconsensual rape and molestation.

Discriminant and Incremental Validity

To demonstrate that the ASMS does not merely replicate general social or sexual conservatism, Yost (2010) performed hierarchical multiple regression analyses entering sexual conservatism, homophobia, RWA, and rape myth acceptance as predictors. The results proved that over half of the total variance in the ASMS (58%) remained unexplained by these established measures. This empirical finding establishes that the ASMS captures a specialized, distinct constellation of prejudicial attitudes toward SM that cannot be accounted for by generalized ideological conservatism or sexual intolerance alone.

Known-Groups and Criterion-Related Validity

The ASMS demonstrated criterion validity through its ability to discriminate between distinct demographic and behavioral cohorts:

• Prior Knowledge: Respondents reporting higher baseline knowledge regarding BDSM subcultures and actual practices scored significantly lower on overall prejudice and on the Violence and Socially Wrong dimensions, confirming that cognitive familiarity diminishes myth-based hostility.
• Self-Identification: Participants who self-identified as being involved in SM exhibited markedly lower prejudice scores, corroborating social psychological models of in-group favoritism and concealable stigma validation (Frable et al., 1998).
• Interpersonal Contact: Non-practicing participants who maintained close personal friendships with known SM practitioners demonstrated substantially more positive attitudes across all subscales than participants without such contact, empirically affirming Allportu2019s contact hypothesis within the domain of kink-oriented sexuality.

Reliability

The internal consistency and measurement reliability of the ASMS were evaluated extensively across the development and validation cohorts ($N = 471$).

Internal Consistency

Subscale reliability was assessed using Cronbachu2019s alpha ($lpha$), yielding very good to excellent coefficients across all dimensions:

• Factor 1: Socially Wrong (12 items): Cronbachu2019s $lpha = .92$, demonstrating high internal homogeneity in assessing moral condemnation, institutional threat, and disgust.
• Factor 2: Violence (5 items): Cronbachu2019s $lpha = .85$, reflecting solid internal reliability in capturing beliefs linking SM to nonconsensual abuse and criminal predation.
• Factor 3: Lack of Tolerance (4 items, reverse-scored): Cronbachu2019s $lpha = .79$, verifying consistent assessment of the unwillingness to afford legal, ethical, and erotic legitimacy to SM.
• Factor 4: Real Life (2 items): Cronbachu2019s $lpha = .78$, which is exceptionally strong for a brief two-item factor assessing behavioral stereotyping across life contexts.

Across the entire 23-item instrument, composite reliability was consistently observed between .88 and .93 across sample configurations. Inter-item correlations within each respective factor maintained adequate strength (generally $r > .40$), ensuring that the subscales measure cohesive constructs without excessive item redundancy.

Factor Analysis

The psychometric architecture of the ASMS was established through a sequential two-phase exploratory and confirmatory factor analytic strategy.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (Sample 1)

In the initial instrument development phase, an initial pool of 58 candidate items was administered to an exploratory sample of 213 participants. The item pool was subjected to Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) using principal axis factoring with oblique (promax/oblimin) rotation, reflecting the theoretical expectation that sub-dimensions of prejudice would be moderately intercorrelated. Items were systematically evaluated and eliminated based on three strict criteria: (a) floor or ceiling effects resulting in restricted variance ($SD < 1.0$), (b) primary factor loadings falling below .40, or (c) problematic cross-loadings exceeding .30 on multiple factors.

This empirical pruning procedure reduced the inventory from 58 to 23 items, cleanly distributed across four clear latent factors explaining the majority of the common variance: Factor 1 (Socially Wrong; 12 items), Factor 2 (Violence; 5 items), Factor 3 (Lack of Tolerance; 4 items), and Factor 4 (Real Life; 2 items).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (Sample 2)

To cross-validate the four-factor latent model, Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted on an independent, non-overlapping validation sample of 258 participants. The hypothesized four-factor model was tested against competing models (including a single-factor unidimensional model and an orthogonal four-factor model).

The correlated four-factor model provided an adequate to superior fit to the empirical data. Goodness-of-fit indices supported the proposed model structure:

• The Comparative Fit Index (CFI) and Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) both exceeded the conventional psychometric threshold of $.90$.
• The Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) fell within acceptable bounds ($< .08$), indicating minimal residual approximation error.
• All 23 standardized factor loadings were statistically significant ($p < .001$), with loadings ranging from .48 to .88, confirming the structural validity of the four-factor design.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale (ASMS)
• Primary Author: Megan R. Yost, Ph.D. (2010)
• Construct Assessed: Prejudicial attitudes, moral condemnation, stereotypes, and intolerance toward consensual sadomasochism and its practitioners
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire
• Number of Items: 23 items
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Factor 1: Socially Wrong (12 items: Items 1 to 12)
  • Factor 2: Violence (5 items: Items 13 to 17)
  • Factor 3: Lack of Tolerance (4 items: Items 18 to 21; all reverse-coded)
  • Factor 4: Real Life (2 items: Items 22 and 23)
• Completion Time: Approximately 8 to 10 minutes
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert-type scale formatted as follows:
  • 1 = Disagree Strongly
  • 2 = Disagree Moderately
  • 3 = Disagree Mildly
  • 4 = Neither Agree nor Disagree (Neutral Midpoint)
  • 5 = Agree Mildly
  • 6 = Agree Moderately
  • 7 = Agree Strongly
• Scoring Instructions:
  • Reverse Scoring: Items within Factor 3 (Lack of Tolerance: Items 18, 19, 20, and 21) are positively phrased. These items must be reverse-coded prior to score aggregation using the formula: $X_{recoded} = 8 – X_{original}$ (i.e., $1 to 7$, $2 to 6$, $3 to 5$, $4 to 4$, $5 to 3$, $6 to 2$, $7 to 1$).
  • Subscale Calculation: Calculate the mean score of the items corresponding to each subscale. Higher mean scores indicate greater levels of anti-SM prejudice, moral condemnation, stereotyping, and intolerance.
  • Overall Composite Score (Optional): A composite anti-SM prejudice score can be computed by calculating the grand mean across all 23 items (after reverse-scoring Factor 3). Subscale-level reporting is strongly recommended due to the distinct theoretical facets assessed.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale (ASMS) was published in 2010 in The Journal of Sex Research. The instrument is protected under standard academic copyright held by the original publisher (Taylor & Francis) and the author, Dr. Megan R. Yost.

The scale is freely accessible for non-commercial educational, clinical, and academic research purposes, provided that proper academic citation is given in all resulting publications, presentations, and reports. Researchers and clinicians wishing to utilize the instrument in funded interventions, commercial platforms, or large-scale clinical trials should contact Dr. Megan R. Yost at Dickinson College ([email protected]) to obtain formal permission and discuss methodological implementations.

References

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• Frable, D. E. S., Platt, L., & Hoey, S. (1998). Concealable stigmas and positive self-perceptions: Feeling better around similar others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(4), 909u2013922. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.4.909
• Herek, G. M. (2004). Beyond “homophobia”: Thinking about sexual prejudice and stigma in the twenty-first century. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 1(2), 6u201324. https://doi.org/10.1525/srsp.2004.1.2.6
• Herek, G. M., & Capitanio, J. (1996). “Some of my best friends”: Intergroup contact, concealable stigma, and heterosexualsu2019 attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22(4), 412u2013424. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167296224007
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• Kolmes, K., Stock, W., & Moser, C. (2006). Investigating bias in psychotherapy with BDSM clients. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2u20133), 301u2013324. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v50n02_15
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• Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In C. S. Vance (Ed.), Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality (pp. 267u2013319). Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33u201347). Brooks/Cole.
• Taylor, G. W., & Ussher, J. M. (2001). Making sense of S&M: A discourse analytic account. Sexualities, 4(3), 293u2013314. https://doi.org/10.1177/136346001004003002
• Weinberg, M. S., Williams, C. J., & Moser, C. (1984). The social constituents of sadomasochism. Social Problems, 31(4), 379u2013389. https://doi.org/10.2307/800385
• Wright, S. (2006). Discrimination of SM-identified individuals. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2u20133), 217u2013231. https://doi.org/10.1300/J082v50n02_10
• Yost, M. R. (2010). Development and validation of the Attitudes About Sadomasochism Scale. The Journal of Sex Research, 47(1), 79u201391. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224490902999278

Items of the Scale