Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression (AMMSA) Scale

1. Abstract

The Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression (AMMSA) Scale is a psychometric instrument designed to measure subtle, contemporary cognitive schemas that rationalize, minimize, or justify male sexual violence against women. Developed by Heike Gerger, Hotte Kley, Gerd Bohner, and Frank Siebler (2007), the scale was constructed to overcome severe ceiling and floor effects inherent in traditional rape myth instruments, such as Martha Burt’s (1980) Rape Myth Acceptance (RMA) Scale and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) Scale (Payne et al., 1999). As societal egalitarian norms evolved, overt endorsements of sexual violence became socially undesirable, driving hostile attitudes toward more covert, modern manifestations. Grounded in theories of modern prejudice, ambivalent sexism, and cognitive attribution, the AMMSA scale conceptualizes myth acceptance as a functionally unified, unidimensional continuum reflecting subtle denial of the scope of sexual violence, attribution of blame to victims, exoneration of perpetrators, naturalization of coercive male sexuality, and hostility toward women who report sexual misconduct.

The scale consists of 30 items administered on a 7-point Likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (completely disagree) to 7 (completely agree). Psychometric investigations across diverse international populations (including German, English, Spanish, and cross-cultural university and community cohorts) demonstrate exceptional internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients consistently spanning .90 to .95. Confirmatory factor analysis robustly supports a dominant general factor, validating its use as an omnibus index of sexual aggression myth acceptance. The instrument exhibits substantial construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity, significantly predicting victim-blaming judgments in mock-juror simulations, proclivity to sexually harass, inclination to commit rape in hypothetical scenarios, and resistance to institutional sexual misconduct prevention initiatives. By capturing the contemporary rhetoric of sexual violence minimization, the AMMSA scale remains one of the most widely utilized and psychometrically validated tools in social, clinical, forensic, and legal psychology.

2. Keywords

Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression, AMMSA Scale, rape myth acceptance, modern sexism, sexual violence, victim blaming, perpetrator exoneration, psychometrics, scale validation, hostile attributions

3. Authors

The Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression (AMMSA) Scale was developed and validated by a collaborative team of social psychologists specializing in prejudice, social cognition, and sexual violence research:

• Heike Gerger, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany; later affiliated with the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University of Bern, Switzerland, and Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Expert in clinical psychology, meta-analysis, and the cognitive underpinnings of interpersonal aggression.
• Hotte Kley, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany; currently specializing in clinical psychology, psychological interventions, and experimental cognitive psychotherapy.
• Gerd Bohner, Ph.D. — Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany. Renowned international authority on attitude theory, persuasion, rape myth acceptance, and gender-based violence.
• Frank Siebler, Ph.D. — Department of Psychology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway. Specialist in quantitative psychometrics, stereotyping, and social cognition.

Correspondence regarding the original AMMSA scale development may be directed to Gerd Bohner, Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, P.O. Box 10 01 31, D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany (Email: [email protected]).

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the AMMSA scale is to quantify contemporary, covert attitudes that serve to legitimize, downplay, or normalize sexual aggression. Historically, the empirical assessment of rape myths relied heavily on scales formulated during the 1970s and 1980s. While foundational, these early measurement tools featured blatant, archaic assertions of misogyny (e.g., asserting that women secretly enjoy being forced into sexual intercourse or that victims actively precipitate violent physical attacks). Over successive decades, changing normative climates and heightened social sanctions against overt sexism created substantial measurement artifacts. Researchers encountered pronounced floor effects on traditional scales: participants routinely rejected blatantly hostile items due to social desirability bias, yielding positively skewed score distributions with severely restricted variance.

To overcome these empirical limitations, Gerger and colleagues (2007) designed the AMMSA scale to capture modern sexual aggression myths. Borrowing insights from modern racism theory (McConahay, 1986) and modern sexism theory (Swim et al., 1995), the instrument reframes myths into subtle, socially palatable assertions. Rather than overtly endorsing violent force, modern myths emphasize skepticism regarding victim credibility, normalize coercive biological imperatives in men, pathologize female communication, and assert that legal frameworks or feminist institutions have created an unfair bias against men.

In research contexts, the AMMSA scale serves as a key predictor variable in experimental social psychology, criminology, and legal decision-making studies. It is extensively applied to investigate how implicit and explicit cognitive biases distort juror perceptions of physical evidence, dilute judicial assessments of consent, and diminish empathy toward victims of intimate partner sexual violence. In clinical, campus, and community settings, the scale provides a sensitive diagnostic baseline for evaluating the efficacy of primary violence prevention workshops, bystander intervention programs, and psychoeducational training for law enforcement personnel, judicial officers, and healthcare professionals.

5. Psychological Construct

The AMMSA scale assesses the acceptance of cognitive representations, stereotypes, and belief systems that obscure or justify sexual violence. Rather than dividing these beliefs into disjointed, orthogonal dimensions, the scale treats sexual aggression myth acceptance as a functionally unified psychological construct anchored in systemic gender hierarchy maintenance. Psychometrically, the scale operates as a unidimensional instrument, yet substantive thematic analysis identifies five interlocking sub-domains of modern mythmaking embedded within its 30 items:

1. Denial of the Scope and Gravity of Sexual Aggression

This dimension reflects beliefs that sexual violence is no longer a pressing systemic problem or that society exhibits a disproportionate, hysterical reaction to harmless sexual advances. Items reflecting this construct suggest that victims exaggerate interpersonal friction, that media coverage sensationalizes mundane incidents, and that societal resources should be diverted toward other societal issues (e.g., Item 14: “Because the fascination caused by sex is disproportionately large, our society’s sensitivity to crimes in this area is disproportionate as well”; Item 29: “Instead of worrying about alleged victims of sexual violence society should rather attend to more urgent problems, such as environmental destruction”). By portraying sexual aggression as an isolated or over-policed phenomenon, respondents minimize collective responsibility.

2. Antagonism Toward Victims’ Claims and Accusations of Ulterior Motives

Reflecting modern hostile sexism, this sub-facet posits that women frequently fabricate or instrumentalize allegations of rape, sexual harassment, or marital assault to extract personal, financial, or political gain. The underlying schema suggests that allegations are tactical maneuvers in relationship disputes or child custody battles (e.g., Item 4: “To get custody for their children, women often falsely accuse their ex-husband of a tendency towards sexual violence”; Item 22: “Women often accuse their husbands of marital rape just to retaliate for a failed relationship”). Endorsement of these items taps deep-seated cynicism toward female autonomy and institutional claims of gender-based harm.

3. Naturalization of Coercive Male Sexuality and Male Exoneration

Rooted in deterministic biological assumptions, this facet portrays male sexual urges as irresistible, hydraulic forces that men cannot reasonably be expected to govern once aroused. Such beliefs rely on hydraulic metaphors of male libido (e.g., Item 21: “A man’s sexuality functions like a steam boiler – when the pressure gets to high, he has to ‘let off steam'”; Item 6: “It is a biological necessity for men to release sexual pressure from time to time”). Consequently, accountability is transferred away from the perpetrator to biological essentialism or situational disinhibitors such as substance intoxication (e.g., Item 26: “Alcohol is often the culprit when a man rapes a woman”).

4. Normative Attribution of Victim Complicity and Token Resistance

This sub-facet encompasses insidious beliefs regarding female sexual communication, notably the myth of “token resistance”—the assumption that women say “no” when they actually mean “yes,” or that women derive pleasure from being pursued aggressively (e.g., Item 15: “Women like to play coy. This does not mean that they do not want sex”; Item 24: “In dating situations the general expectation is that the woman ‘hits the brakes’ and the man ‘pushes ahead'”). Furthermore, it allocates causal responsibility to victims for entering risk-laden environments or engaging in common social behaviors (e.g., Item 11: “Any woman who is careless enough to walk through ‘dark alleys’ at night is partly to be blamed if she is raped”).

5. Affirmation of Institutional Fairness and Denial of Structural Injustice

Modern myth acceptance frequently operates through Panglossian system justification: the belief that modern society has already eliminated gender disparities, provides an abundance of victim support systems, and punishes real transgressors with absolute equity (e.g., Item 7: “After a rape, women nowadays receive ample support”; Item 30: “Nowadays, men who really sexually assault women are punished justly”). By expressing profound confidence in the legal system, individuals justify their refusal to support progressive legal reforms or victim advocacy initiatives.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the AMMSA scale is rooted in three convergent paradigms of contemporary social psychology:

Burt’s Foundational Rape Myth Theory

The conceptual genesis of rape myth acceptance stems from the seminal work of Martha Burt (1980), who defined rape myths as “prejudicial, stereotyped, or false beliefs about rape, rape victims, and rapists” that generate a cultural climate conducive to sexual assault. Burt demonstrated that rape myths do not exist in a psychological vacuum; rather, they form an ideological constellation alongside adversarial sexual beliefs, gender role stereotyping, and generalized acceptance of interpersonal violence. Bohner and colleagues (1998, 2007) expanded this definition by conceptualizing rape myths not merely as descriptive falsehoods, but as attitudes and cognitive schemas serving an ideological function: maintaining male dominance, stabilizing traditional gender roles, and buffering men from identification with sexually violent perpetrators.

The Modern/Subtle Prejudice Paradigm

The transition from classical instruments to the AMMSA scale was heavily driven by the cognitive shifting standards model and the modern prejudice literature (McConahay, 1986; Swim et al., 1995). In modern societies, egalitarian norms have stigmatized overt, hostile statements against women. When confronted with classical rape myth scales containing statements like “A woman who goes to the home or apartment of a man on their first date implies that she is willing to have sex,” individuals recognize the anti-egalitarian implication and deliberately moderate their responses.

To capture latent hostility without activating normative suppression mechanisms, the AMMSA scale relies on subtle discursive formulations. These statements avoid explicit endorsements of criminal violence, instead appealing to shared normative heuristics: fairness, biological naturalism, freedom from false accusation, and equitable resource allocation. By shifting from overt antipathy to institutional skepticism, the AMMSA scale allows individuals harboring covert hostile attitudes to express them legitimately.

Attribution Theory and System Justification

The scale integrates Weiner’s attribution theory and John Jost’s System Justification Theory. Attribution theory posits that individuals actively seek causal explanations for negative social events. In the context of sexual assault, assigning internal, controllable attributions to the victim (e.g., her clothing, beverage choices, or willingness to enter a private residence) alleviates personal vulnerability and reinforces belief in a just world (Lerner, 1980). System Justification Theory explains why both men and women endorse modern myths: doing so psychologically protects the status quo, defending existing socio-legal arrangements as intrinsically fair, functioning, and immune to pervasive structural misogyny.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the AMMSA scale has been established through empirical investigations across clinical, student, forensic, and representative community populations worldwide.

Construct and Factorial Validity

In the original validation studies across German and English samples ($N = 1,228$), Gerger et al. (2007) established that the 30 items cleanly loaded onto a predominant, robust general dimension. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that while sub-facets can be differentiated thematically, an overarching higher-order model fits the data optimally, proving that modern myth acceptance operates as a generalized social attitude.

Convergent Validity

The AMMSA scale demonstrates strong convergent validity with established measures of gender ideology and prejudice. Gerger et al. (2007) and subsequent investigations (e.g., Bohner et al., 2013; Megías et al., 2011) observed substantial, statistically significant correlations with:

• Hostile Sexism (Ambivalent Sexism Inventory; ASI): $r$ values typically range from $.60$ to $.74$, demonstrating that modern myth acceptance is strongly linked to overt antagonism toward women.
• Benevolent Sexism (ASI): Moderate positive correlations ranging from $.30$ to $.45$, supporting the theoretical premise that protective paternalism still reinforces traditional, victim-blaming stereotypes.
• Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): Correlations consistently between $.40$ and $.55$, reflecting an adherence to traditional social hierarchies and punitive attitudes toward perceived social deviants.
• Social Dominance Orientation (SDO): Moderate-to-strong correlations ($r = .35$ to $.52$), indicating that individuals who support group-based inequality readily endorse modern sexual myths.
• Traditional Rape Myth Scales: High correlations ($r = .70$ to $.82$) with the Burt RMA and the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance (IRMA) scale, alongside superior distribution normality (avoiding the acute left-skewness and floor effects typical of the IRMA).

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by modest-to-negligible correlations with generalized social desirability response sets (Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale correlations typically falling between $r = -.05$ and $r = -.18$, non-significant or weak). This proves that unlike classical rape myth inventories, the AMMSA scale is substantially less compromised by impression management strategies. Additionally, the AMMSA scale discriminates effectively between myth acceptance and general, non-gendered conservative political attitudes once authoritarianism is statistically controlled.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale possesses exemplary predictive validity regarding experimental and real-world behavioral outcomes:

• Mock-Juror Decision-Making: Bohner et al. (2007) and Süssenbach et al. (2012) found that higher AMMSA scores significantly predicted lower conviction rates for alleged rapists, higher rates of victim-blaming attributions, lower empathy ratings for victims, and perceived justification for coercive sexual overtures.
• Self-Reported Rape Proclivity: In anonymous experimental testing conditions using male samples, AMMSA scores positively predicted self-reported likelihood to engage in sexually coercive behaviors or commit rape if guaranteed total immunity from legal detection ($r = .42$ to $.58$).
• Evaluation of Prevention Campaigns: High AMMSA scores reliably predict dismissive, hostile reactions toward sexual assault prevention campaigns on university campuses and among military recruits.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the AMMSA scale has been established across multiple languages, demographics, and cultural contexts.

Internal Consistency

The internal consistency of the 30-item AMMSA scale is high across all published psychometric evaluations:

• Original Scale Validation (Gerger et al., 2007): In the initial series of German validation studies (Sample 1: $N = 254$; Sample 2: $N = 345$), the scale yielded Cronbach’s alpha ($lpha$) coefficients between $.92$ and $.95$. In the cross-language English validation sample ($N = 168$ British undergraduates), the internal consistency was confirmed at $lpha = .93$.
• Spanish Adaptation (Megías et al., 2011): Evaluation among Spanish university students ($N = 654$) and general community adults ($N = 214$) yielded an alpha of $.90$ for females and $.92$ for males.
• Cross-Cultural and Clinical Samples: Subsequent studies spanning diverse samples (e.g., healthcare providers, legal practitioners, police recruits) have mirrored these estimates, with internal consistency values consistently falling within the $.91$ to $.94$ range. Item-total correlations across the 30 items are robust, almost universally exceeding $.40$, with mean corrected item-total correlations hovering around $.52$.

Test-Retest Reliability

Gerger and colleagues (2007) administered the AMMSA scale longitudinally to evaluate temporal stability across intervals ranging from 4 to 8 weeks. Test-retest reliability coefficients exhibited high temporal endurance ($r_{tt} = .83$ to $.89$, $p < .001$), demonstrating that modern sexual aggression myths function as stable sociocognitive traits rather than transient, state-dependent affectations.

9. Factor Analysis

During the structural development of the AMMSA scale, Gerger et al. (2007) applied both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) across independent participant cohorts to systematically investigate its latent dimensionality.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal axis factoring (PAF) conducted on the German item pool yielded a massive first unrotated factor explaining roughly $34%$ to $38%$ of the total scale variance, with a clear scree plot break after the first factor. Subsequent factors accounted for drastically smaller increments of variance (each under $4.5%$). Although secondary and tertiary factors could be extracted via oblimin rotation—broadly corresponding to the thematic groupings of denial, victim blaming, and male sexual naturalization—the factor intercorrelations were high ($r > .50$ to $.70$). This high degree of collinearity supported the psychometric parsimony of an omnibus, single-factor solution.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To empirically validate the structural integrity, Gerger et al. (2007) tested multiple competing models using CFA structural equation modeling: a strict unidimensional single-factor model, an orthogonal multi-factor model, an oblique multi-factor model, and a hierarchical bi-factor model with one general modern myth factor and five sub-dimensions.

As illustrated in the goodness-of-fit indices, both the single-factor model and the hierarchical bi-factor model demonstrate strong fit. Because all 30 items exhibit standardized factor loadings exceeding $.40 (ranging from$.42 to $.76, mean loading$lambda = .58$) on the single primary factor, Gerger et al. concluded that calculating a single composite mean score represents the most methodologically sound and conceptually robust approach for general empirical use.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression Scale (AMMSA Scale)
• Alternative Name: Acceptance of Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression Scale
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents aged 16 and above (university populations, legal/juror pools, law enforcement personnel, healthcare providers, and community samples)
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire
• Completion Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes
• Item Count: 30 items
• Response Format: 7-point Likert scale formatted as:
• 1 = completely disagree
• 2 = disagree
• 3 = disagree somewhat
• 4 = neutral
• 5 = agree somewhat
• 6 = agree
• 7 = completely agree
• Scoring Protocol: All 30 items are positively keyed toward the acceptance of modern sexual aggression myths; there are no reverse-scored items. An overall individual AMMSA score is calculated by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean of all 30 items (summing all numerical responses and dividing by 30). This yields an overall index ranging from 1.00 to 7.00, where higher scores reflect greater acceptance of modern myths about sexual aggression.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The AMMSA scale was published by Heike Gerger, Hotte Kley, Gerd Bohner, and Frank Siebler in 2007 in the peer-reviewed journal Aggressive Behavior. The full English and German instruments were placed into the public scientific domain via open publication to advance psychological research, legal fairness, and sexual violence prevention.

Licensing and Fee Structure: The scale is available free of charge for non-commercial, academic, educational, and clinical research purposes. No formal permission or licensing fee is required from the original authors or publisher when used for scientific research. Researchers are expected to appropriately cite the original validation study (Gerger et al., 2007) in subsequent publications. Commercial applications, profit-driven assessments, or digital redistribution in proprietary software require prior authorization from the authors and the copyright-holding publisher (Wiley-Blackwell).

12. References

Bohner, G., Eyssel, J., Pina, A., Siebler, F., & Viki, G. T. (2013). Rape myth acceptance and sexual violence against women: A social psychological perspective. In K. Cortina & M. A. Paludi (Eds.), Victimization of Women: Conception, Cause, and Consequence (pp. 53–86). Praeger Publishing.

Bohner, G., Reinhard, M. A., Rutz, S., Sturm, S., Kerschbaum, B., & Effler, D. (1998). Rape myths as cognitive schemas: A framework for judging sexual assault. European Journal of Social Psychology, 28(2), 257–268. https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199803/04)28:2<257::AID-EJSP866>3.0.CO;2-9

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

Gerger, H., Kley, H., Bohner, G., & Siebler, F. (2007). The Acceptance of Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression (AMMSA) Scale: Development and validation in German and English. Aggressive Behavior, 33(5), 422–440. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.20207

Lerner, M. J. (1980). The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0448-5

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

McConahay, J. B. (1986). Modern racism, ambivalence, and the Modern Racism Scale. In J. F. Dovidio & S. L. Gaertner (Eds.), Prejudice, Discrimination, and Racism (pp. 91–125). Academic Press.

Megías, J. L., Romero-Sánchez, M., Durán, M., Moya, M., & Bohner, G. (2011). Spanish validation of the Acceptance of Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression Scale (AMMSA). The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 14(2), 912–923. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev_SJOP.2011.v14.n2.37

Payne, D. L., Lonsway, K. A., & Fitzgerald, L. F. (1999). Rape myth acceptance: Exploration of its nature and assessment using the Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 33(1), 27–68. https://doi.org/10.1006/jrpe.1998.2238

Süssenbach, P., Eyssel, F., & Bohner, G. (2012). Metacognitive processes in rape myth acceptance: A modern perspective. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 27(8), 1435–1457. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260511425791

Swim, J. K., Aikin, K. J., Hall, W. S., & Hunter, B. A. (1995). Sexism and racism: Old-fashioned and modern prejudices. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(2), 199–214. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.68.2.199

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)