Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale

Abstract

The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMA), developed by Diana L. Payne, Kimberly A. Lonsway, and Louise F. Fitzgerald (1999), is one of the most widely utilized and psychometrically validated instruments for evaluating endorsement of cultural fallacies, misconceptions, and stereotypical beliefs concerning sexual assault, survivors, and perpetrators. Designed to address critical psychometric, conceptual, and linguistic limitations present in early instruments—such as Martha Burt’s seminal 1980 Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (RMA)—the IRMA conceptualizes rape myths not as uniform beliefs, but as multifaceted cognitive schemas that function systematically to deny, justify, minimize, or exonerate sexual violence against women. The full standard scale consists of 45 items grouped across distinct conceptual dimensions, while specialized subsets and updated short forms (such as the 22-item and 25-item configurations refined by McMahon and Farmer in 2011) assess key sub-dimensions including: She Asked For It (victim precipitation and blaming), He Didn’t Mean To (perpetrator excuse and biological determinism), It Wasn’t Really Rape (redefining sexual violation or requiring physical injury), and She Lied (fabrication and ulterior motives).

Responses are measured on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all agree) to 7 (very much agree), with higher composite scores reflecting elevated acceptance of rape myths. Across extensive validation cohorts comprising university students, community participants, law enforcement officers, and criminal justice actors, the IRMA demonstrates exceptional internal consistency (Cronbach’s α coefficients routinely between .87 and .95 for total scores, and .70 to .89 for subscales), high test-retest reliability, and robust construct, convergent, and predictive validity. Elevated IRMA scores systematically correlate with adversarial sexual beliefs, hostile sexism, traditional gender role adherence, acceptance of interpersonal violence, and real-world behavioral outcomes such as self-reported sexually aggressive inclinations and anti-victim juror decision-making. This article provides a comprehensive academic overview of the IRMA’s theoretical foundations, structural and psychometric properties, factor architecture, administrative guidelines, and authentic instrument items.

Keywords

Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale, IRMA, rape myth acceptance, sexual assault, victim blaming, gender-based violence, hostile sexism, psychometrics, Burt RMA, feminist criminology, McMahon and Farmer, sexual aggression

Authors

The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale was originally developed and psychometrically validated by a research team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign:

• Diana L. Payne, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Payne’s research centered on social cognition, gender attitudes, measurement theory, and the systemic rationalization of violence.
• Kimberly A. Lonsway, Ph.D. – Department of Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (later Director of Research for End Violence Against Women International – EVAWI). Dr. Lonsway is an internationally recognized expert in law enforcement response to sexual assault, criminal justice system reform, and the psychometric operationalization of gender-based violence attitudes.
• Louise F. Fitzgerald, Ph.D. – Professor Emerita of Psychology and Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A pioneering scholar in sexual harassment, victimology, and feminist psychology, Dr. Fitzgerald developed widely used diagnostic tools including the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ).
• Subsequent Revisions (Updated IRMA / Short Forms): Sarah McMahon, Ph.D., MSW, and Shannon Farmer, Ph.D., School of Social Work, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, who adapted and modernized the instrument’s factor structure and language in 2011 to reflect contemporary collegiate discourse.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale is to provide an empirically sound, psychometrically rigorous, and linguistically contemporary instrument for measuring the extent to which individuals subscribe to false, stereotyped, or culturally conditioned beliefs regarding sexual assault. Historically, the assessment of rape myths was dominated by Martha Burt’s (1980) Rape Myth Acceptance Scale. While Burt’s work was revolutionary, subsequent psychometric evaluations over the late 1980s and 1990s revealed critical vulnerabilities: several items had grown dated in colloquial tone, confounding variables such as general conservatism were conflated with myth acceptance, certain statements lacked discriminatory power due to extreme ceiling or floor effects, and the unidimensional scoring masked theoretically distinct pathways through which individuals justify or deny sexual violence.

Payne, Lonsway, and Fitzgerald (1999) engineered the IRMA to overcome these conceptual and statistical deficits. Their purpose was threefold:

1. Theoretical Delineation: To capture the multidimensional nature of rape myths. Rape myths do not merely suggest that women falsely report assault; they encompass beliefs that women provoke attacks through dress or intoxication, that men possess an uncontrollable biological sex drive that excuses nonconsensual acts, that genuine sexual assault necessitates explicit physical violence or weapon use, and that sexual trauma is trivial or fabricated.
2. Clinical and Evaluative Utility: To serve as an objective evaluation tool for primary and secondary sexual assault prevention programs (such as bystander intervention initiatives, Greek-life educational seminars, and military readiness training). By administering the IRMA in pre-test and post-test experimental designs, researchers and practitioners can measure shifts in cognitive schemas and evaluate whether intervention curricula successfully dismantle rape-supportive attitudes.
3. Forensic and Socio-Legal Investigation: To investigate how juror bias, judicial decision-making, prosecutorial discretion, and police cynicism are influenced by ingrained cultural stereotypes. High levels of rape myth endorsement among legal practitioners and law enforcement personnel directly contribute to secondary victimization, low rates of case progression, and unjust acquittals. The IRMA provides researchers with the standard metric required to predict attrition across the criminal justice pipeline.

Psychological Construct

The construct of Rape Myth Acceptance (RMA) was originally defined by Burt (1980) as “prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists.” Payne, Lonsway, and Fitzgerald (1999) expanded this construct, characterizing rape myths as attitudes and cognitive schemas that are generally false but widely and persistently held, serving to deny, justify, or normalize male sexual aggression against women. Rather than representing isolated factual errors, rape myths operate as an integrated cultural ideology that preserves patriarchal gender hierarchies, shields perpetrators from moral accountability, and shifts culpability onto victims.

The multidimensional construct measured by the IRMA and its validated variants spans four major conceptual domains:

1. She Asked For It (Victim Precipitation and Culpability)

This dimension taps into the cognitive tendency to assign causal responsibility for the assault to the victim’s choices, deportment, clothing, or physical state. It reflects the assumption that non-conforming, sexually autonomous, or risk-associated behaviors (such as entering a private space alone with an acquaintance, consuming alcohol, or wearing revealing attire) constitute implicit consent or contributory negligence. By framing the victim’s behavior as provocative, this schema absolves the assailant of unilateral criminal liability.

2. He Didn’t Mean To (Perpetrator Exoneration and Biological Determinism)

This subscale assesses the belief that male sexual violence is an unintended consequence of an overwhelming, uncontrollable biological sex drive, intoxication, or emotional miscommunication. Rooted in traditional essentialist views of male sexuality, this dimension frames perpetrators not as violent criminals exercising coercive power, but as normal men who simply “got carried away” or misinterpreted ambiguous nonverbal cues, thereby mitigating moral and legal culpability.

3. It Wasn’t Really Rape (Redefining and Delegitimizing the Violation)

This dimension encompasses myths that restrict the definition of “authentic” rape to stereotypical, hyper-violent scenarios (frequently termed the “stranger in a dark alley” or “real rape” script). Statements within this domain posit that if a victim does not incur visible physical trauma (e.g., severe bruising, lacerations), does not wage desperate physical resistance, or had prior romantic or sexual history with the perpetrator, the incident constitutes voluntary sex, ambiguous seduction, or simple buyer’s remorse rather than a felony offense.

4. She Lied (Fabrication, Deceit, and Ulterior Motives)

This subscale captures deep-seated cynicism regarding the veracity of sexual assault disclosures. It operationalizes beliefs that women routinely weaponize false allegations of rape to preserve reputation following consensual infidelity, deflect parental or peer disapproval, seek revenge against a partner, or gain interpersonal leverage. This schema directly drives victim-blaming, prosecutorial skepticism, and systemic institutional betrayal.

Theoretical Framework

The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale is anchored in the intersection of feminist criminology, social cognitive theory, and system justification theory.

Feminist Theory and Hegemonic Patriarchy

Feminist theorists (e.g., Susan Brownmiller, Andrea Dworkin) posited that rape is not an isolated crime of uncontrolled lust, but an institutionalized mechanism of social control that keeps women in a state of psychological subordination. In this framework, rape myths function as cultural rationalizations that sustain patriarchal hegemony. By constructing boundaries around what constitutes a “virtuous” or “legitimate” victim, rape myths police female behavior, mobility, dress, and sexual autonomy, enforcing compliance with traditional gender roles.

Attribution Theory and the Just-World Phenomenon

From a cognitive social psychology perspective, the IRMA draws heavily on Melvin Lerner’s Just-World Hypothesis. The belief in a just world posits that individuals experience existential distress when confronted with unpredictable, catastrophic harm befalling an innocent person. To preserve the reassuring perception that the world is orderly, predictable, and fair, observers engage in defensive attribution: they infer that the victim must have done something to provoke, deserve, or facilitate their victimization. This psychological defense mechanism enables individuals—both men and women—to insulate themselves from the terrifying realization that sexual violence can strike arbitrarily, regardless of moral character or defensive vigilance.

Ambivalent Sexism Theory

The IRMA is theoretically linked to Peter Glick and Susan Fiske’s (1996) model of Ambivalent Sexism, which bifurcates anti-female attitudes into hostile sexism (overtly antagonistic, derogatory attitudes toward women who challenge male dominance) and benevolent sexism (subjectively positive but paternalistic and protective attitudes toward women who conform to traditional roles). Rape myth acceptance operates as an ideological enforcement arm: women who violate traditional standards of chastity, sobriety, or modesty are subjected to hostile condemnation (She asked for it), whereas conforming women are theoretically granted conditional protection—a bargain shattered when acquaintance rape occurs in normative settings.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the IRMA has been confirmed across diverse cross-cultural, demographic, and occupational samples.

Construct and Structural Validity

Construct validity was established by Payne et al. (1999) using extensive multi-stage scale development, demonstrating that the IRMA effectively isolates myths about rape from tangential constructs like general conservatism or political orientation. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) conducted by McMahon and Farmer (2011) confirmed that the multidimensional models maintain structural validity superior to unidimensional alternatives, yielding root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) values below .06 and comparative fit index (CFI) values exceeding .92.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The IRMA exhibits robust convergent validity through strong positive correlations with established scales measuring theoretically contiguous constructs:

• Hostile Sexism: Strong positive correlations (typically r = .55 to .72) with the Hostile Sexism subscale of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI).
• Adversarial Sexual Beliefs: Moderate-to-high positive correlations (r = .48 to .65) with Burt’s Adversarial Sexual Beliefs Scale (ASBS).
• Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence: Positive associations (r = .40 to .60) with the Acceptance of Interpersonal Violence (AIV) scale.
• Hypermasculinity: Positive correlations among male cohorts with the Hypermasculinity Index (HMI), particularly with callous sexual attitudes.

Discriminant validity is verified by significantly lower correlations with unrelated psychological constructs such as social desirability (crowne-marlowe scales), non-gender-related cognitive styles, and general cognitive intelligence (r values typically < .15).

Predictive and Ecological Validity

The predictive power of the IRMA is documented in both experimental and observational paradigms. In forensic mock-trial studies, elevated IRMA scores strongly predict lower rates of guilty verdicts in sexual assault trials, lower credibility ratings assigned to survivor testimony, and heightened empathy directed toward male defendants. In behavioral self-report research among university men, high IRMA scores significantly predict self-reported likelihood of committing sexual coercion or assault under conditions of guaranteed impunity.

Reliability

The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale displays high internal consistency and temporal stability across research literature:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): In the initial validation studies by Payne, Lonsway, and Fitzgerald (1999), the full 45-item scale demonstrated an overall Cronbach’s α of .93 to .95 among undergraduate student cohorts. Subscale reliabilities remained high, ranging between .75 and .89. In McMahon and Farmer’s (2011) modernized short-form psychometric updates, the overall alpha remained stable at α = .88 to .92, with subscale alphas consistently exceeding the acceptable threshold: She Asked For It (α ≈ .84–.87), He Didn’t Mean To (α ≈ .76–.81), It Wasn’t Really Rape (α ≈ .79–.83), and She Lied (α ≈ .81–.85).
• Test-Retest Reliability: Payne et al. (1999) assessed temporal stability across intervals ranging from two to four weeks, reporting test-retest reliability coefficients between r = .80 and r = .88, confirming that the scale captures stable social-cognitive attitudes rather than transient situational affect.
• Inter-Item Correlations: Mean inter-item correlations reliably fall within the recommended .20 to .40 range, indicating strong conceptual coherence without problematic item redundancy.

Factor Analysis

The latent architecture of the IRMA was determined through sequential Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across diverse cohorts totaling thousands of respondents.

In the original 1999 investigations, principal axes factor extractions followed by oblique (Promax) rotations revealed seven primary sub-factors in the full 45-item instrument:

1. She asked for it (attributions of victim responsibility)
2. It wasn’t really rape (defining non-stranger, uninjured assaults as non-rape)
3. He didn’t mean to (attributing assault to uncontrollable male biology or intoxication)
4. She wanted it (eroticization of sexual assault and female masochism)
5. She lied (accusations as fabrication, spite, or reputation-saving)
6. Rape is a trivial event (minimizing the psychological trauma of sexual violation)
7. Rape is a deviant event (stereotyping rape as restricted to “bad neighborhoods” or pathological deviants)

In the extensive CFA re-evaluations conducted by McMahon and Farmer (2011), modern structural equation modeling showed that a streamlined, four-factor, second-order hierarchical model demonstrated superior fit for educational and intervention research. In this refined framework, items load systematically onto four primary first-order latent constructs (She Asked For It, He Didn’t Mean To, It Wasn’t Really Rape, and She Lied), all subordinate to a global higher-order factor of Rape Myth Acceptance. Standardized factor loadings across these validated items range robustly from .48 to .84, with structural fit indices meeting rigorous benchmarks: χ²/df < 2.5, RMSEA ≤ .055, and CFI ≥ .94.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale (IRMA)
• Authors: Diana L. Payne, Kimberly A. Lonsway, & Louise F. Fitzgerald (1999); updated forms by Sarah McMahon & Shannon Farmer (2011)
• Construct Assessed: Endorsement of cultural myths, rationalizations, and misconceptions surrounding rape, victims, and perpetrators
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computer-based digital questionnaire; suitable for group or individual settings
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes (for 22-item to 25-item forms); 12 to 18 minutes (for full 45-item form)
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Not at all agree
  • 2 = Strongly disagree / Very slightly agree
  • 3 = Disagree / Slightly agree
  • 4 = Neutral / Moderate
  • 5 = Slightly agree
  • 6 = Strongly agree
  • 7 = Very much agree
• Scoring and Interpretation:
  • Item scores range from 1 to 7.
  • Subscale scores are calculated by summing or averaging the items within that specific dimension.
  • A global IRMA score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of all completed items (or the total sum score).
  • Higher scores indicate a higher endorsement of rape myths, elevated victim-blaming schemas, and greater tolerance of sexual violence.
  • In research protocols, certain normative or distractor items (e.g., statements affirming victim support or criminal prevention) are excluded from the core myth score or reverse-coded if incorporated into specific sub-indices.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale was initially published in 1999 by Diana L. Payne, Kimberly A. Lonsway, and Louise F. Fitzgerald in the Journal of Research in Personality (Academic Press / Elsevier). The updated collegiate versions (IRMA-U) were validated and published by Sarah McMahon and Shannon Farmer in 2011 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence (SAGE Publications).

The instrument is considered open-access for academic, empirical, educational, and clinical non-profit research purposes, provided appropriate formal citation of the authors’ original validation publications is maintained. No licensing fee or royalty is required for standard academic research, master’s theses, or doctoral dissertations. Commercial applications, inclusion in fee-for-service psychometric batteries, or proprietary software platforms require express written authorization and potential licensing agreements with the copyright holders and publishers (Elsevier / SAGE).

References

• 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
• Glick, P., & Fiske, S. T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(3), 491–512. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491
• Lerner, M. J. (1980). The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3602-0
• Lonsway, K. A., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1994). Rape myths: In review. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 18(2), 133–164. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1994.tb00448.x
• McMahon, S., & Farmer, S. (2011). An updated measure for assessing subtle rape myths. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 26(4), 760–781. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260510365859
• Payne, D. L., Lonsway, K. A., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1999). Rape myth acceptance: Exploration of its structure and its measurement using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 33(1), 27–68. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1998.2238

Items of the Scale