Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RRF)

1. Abstract

The Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RRF), developed by social psychologists Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger in 2004, is an extensively utilized psychometric instrument designed to assess religious fundamentalism as a distinct social-cognitive construct. Originating from their earlier 20-item Religious Fundamentalism Scale published in 1992, the revised 12-item version provides an economical, psychometrically refined measure that assesses the belief in a single, set, unalterable set of religious truths that must be defended against modern corruptions. Crucially, the construct is conceptualized and operationalized to be doctrinally non-denominational, capturing the structure and rigid orientation of religious belief rather than affiliation with any specific theological tradition (such as Christianity, Islam, or Judaism).

The scale consists of 12 items administered via an asymmetric 9-point response format running from −4 (“very strongly disagree”) to +4 (“very strongly agree”), which are subsequently transformed to a 1 to 9 continuum for scoring. It features an equal balance of six pro-trait and six contrait (reverse-coded) items to mitigate acquiescence response bias. Psychometrically, the RRF demonstrates outstanding internal consistency, regularly reporting Cronbach’s alpha coefficients between .91 and .93 across diverse student, adult, and cross-cultural samples. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses consistently support an essentially unidimensional latent structure. The scale exhibits robust convergent and predictive validity, demonstrating moderate to strong positive associations with Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), ethnocentrism, and prejudice toward sexual minorities and religious outgroups, while negatively correlating with openness to experience, religious quest orientation, and cognitive flexibility.

2. Keywords

Religious fundamentalism, Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale, RRF, Bob Altemeyer, Bruce Hunsberger, Right-Wing Authoritarianism, prejudice, dogmatism, psychometrics, religiosity, social psychology of religion, cognitive rigidity

3. Authors

The Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale was developed by two prominent researchers in personality and social psychology:

• Bob Altemeyer, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Psychology (Emeritus), Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Altemeyer is renowned internationally for his foundational theoretical and empirical work on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA), authoritarian aggression, and political-psychological behavior.
• Bruce E. Hunsberger, Ph.D. (1944–2003) — Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Hunsberger was a leading figure in the scientific study of the psychology of religion, serving as President of Division 36 (Psychology of Religion and Spirituality) of the American Psychological Association (APA). His research focused extensively on religious socialization, religious doubt, fundamentalism, and prejudice.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RRF) is to provide a reliable, unidimensional, and structurally sound measurement of religious fundamentalism that transcends the idiosyncrasies of specific theological doctrines. Prior to Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s work, psychological measurements of fundamentalism often conflated fundamentalism with conventional church attendance, orthodoxy, personal piety, or exclusively conservative Christian tenets (such as biblical inerrancy, creationism, or the virgin birth). Consequently, such scales could not be meaningfully administered to non-Christian cohorts, such as Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or secular populations, without severe validity attenuation.

Altemeyer and Hunsberger solved this theoretical and methodological impasse by defining fundamentalism not as what one believes, but how one holds those beliefs. The RRF measures the psychological conviction that there is one set of religious teachings that clearly contains the fundamental, inerrant truth about humanity and the deity; that this essential truth is opposed by vigorous forces of evil; that this truth must be followed according to the unchangeable practices of the past; and that those who believe and follow this fundamental truth have a special relationship with the deity.

In research contexts, the RRF has become an indispensable tool across social, clinical, and political psychology. It is widely employed to:

• Investigate the psychological etiologies of systemic intergroup hostility, prejudice, ethnocentrism, and discriminatory attitudes toward marginalized groups, particularly sexual minorities (e.g., gay, lesbian, and transgender populations).
• Disentangle the empirical overlap between generalized political authoritarianism (RWA), Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), and intrinsically motivated religious commitment.
• Assess the role of cognitive closure, need for certainty, and dogmatic thinking in ideological extremism, conspiracy theory endorsement, and science skepticism (such as resistance to biological evolution or medical consensus).
• Serve as a compact, 12-item psychometric screen in clinical, counseling, and organizational settings where high-stakes ideological rigidity, cultic vulnerability, or religious trauma and moral scrupulosity are relevant factors.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale is anchored in Altemeyer and Hunsberger’s (1992, 2004) conceptualization. Rather than conceptualizing fundamentalism as an aggressive psychopathology or mere socio-political conservatism, they identified it as a coherent attitude cluster characterized by four foundational pillars:

Uncompromised, Bedrock Truth

Fundamentalism posits that an absolute, comprehensive, and unfailing guide to human salvation and truth exists in the world. As reflected in Scale Item 1 (“God has given humanity, a complete unfailing guide to happiness and salvation, which must be totally followed”) and Item 5 (“There is a particular set of religious teachings in this world that are so true, you can’t go any ‘deeper’ because they are the basic, bedrock message God has given humanity”), the fundamentalist mind rejects epistemological relativism or pluralism. Truth is viewed as finalized, closed to negotiation, and eternally established.

Cosmic Dualism and Spiritual Warfare

A cardinal dimension of this construct is the sharp bifurcated worldview dividing the cosmos into forces of absolute righteousness and absolute malevolence. Item 3 (“The basic cause of evil in this world is Satan, who is still constantly and ferociously fighting against God”) captures this externalized metaphysical struggle, framing human doubts, modernizing impulses, or alternative philosophies not as harmless variations, but as active machinations of evil. Conversely, Item 9 reverse-codes this view by portraying Satan as merely a metaphor for human impulses.

In-Group Exclusivism and Divinely Sanctioned Elite Status

The construct entails an uncompromising division between those who possess the truth and the out-group that lacks it. Item 6 articulates this moral dichotomy: “When you get right down to it, there are basically two kinds of people in the world: the righteous who will be rewarded by God; and the rest who will not.” This leads directly to the perspective measured in Item 8, asserting that salvation, purpose, and moral worth require explicit allegiance to this singular, true faith.

Resistance to Modern Epistemic Authorities and Secular Synthesis

Fundamentalism inherently resists secular revisions, historical-critical scripture interpretations, and empirical contradictions. Item 10 reflects this tension directly by examining science-religion disputes: “Whenever science and sacred scripture conflict, science is probably right” (reverse coded). Similarly, Item 11 (“The fundamentals of God’s religion should never be tampered with, or compromised with others’ beliefs”) captures the perceived existential threat of ecumenism, theological liberalism, and syncretism.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework of the RRF is situated at the intersection of cognitive social psychology, the psychology of religion, and authoritarian personality theory. It emerged primarily from Altemeyer’s lifelong investigation into the etiology of authoritarian submission, aggression, and conventionalism (Altemeyer, 1981, 1988, 1996).

Authoritarianism and the Social Learning Foundation

Altemeyer conceptualized Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) not as a psychoanalytic Freudian defense mechanism, as had Theodor Adorno and colleagues in their 1950 work The Authoritarian Personality, but as a consequence of social learning and cognitive development. RWA comprises three attitudinal clusters: authoritarian submission to perceived legitimate authorities, authoritarian aggression against perceived deviant or outgroup targets, and high conventionalism. During extensive research throughout the 1980s, Altemeyer repeatedly found that religious variables strongly predicted high RWA scores. However, existing measures of religiosity conflated intrinsic devotion with authoritarian dogmatism.

To isolate this dynamic, Altemeyer and Hunsberger developed the Religious Fundamentalism Scale in 1992. They theorized that fundamentalism represents the religious instantiation of authoritarian conventionalism and submission. Just as the political authoritarian defers unconditionally to political strongmen and established societal mores, the religious fundamentalist defers unreservedly to sacred texts and traditional religious leaders.

Cognitive Style and Epistemic Closure

From a cognitive perspective, fundamentalism operates as a powerful epistemic defense mechanism against existential anxiety, ambiguity, and ontological uncertainty. Drawing upon Arie Kruglanski’s Need for Cognitive Closure theory, fundamentalist ideology provides immediate, unequivocal, permanent answers to complex human dilemmas (e.g., mortality, suffering, moral responsibility). Once this cognitive shelter is constructed, any deviation, scientific contradiction, or competing theological perspective is perceived not merely as an intellectual disagreement, but as an existential threat to the believer’s cognitive equilibrium.

The Dual-Process Cognitive Model of Prejudice

The scale is also central to John Duckitt’s Dual-Process Cognitive-Motivational Model of ideology and prejudice. In this framework, personality traits (such as low Openness to Experience and low Agreeableness) interacting with socialized perceptions of the world as a “dangerous, threatening place” foster authoritarian attitudes and fundamentalist religious leanings. These ideological mindsets in turn motivate defensive out-group disparagement to maintain internal security and in-group coherence.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale has been rigorously documented across numerous empirical investigations since its introduction in 2004.

Construct and Convergent Validity

The RRF exhibits strong, theoretically coherent correlations with established psychological scales:

• Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA): In their 2004 validation paper across three distinct samples (university students, their parents, and an independent adult cohort), Altemeyer and Hunsberger reported robust positive correlations between the 12-item RRF and the RWA Scale ranging from r = .68 to .78 (p < .001).
• Intrinsic Religiosity: The RRF correlates strongly with measures of intrinsic religious orientation (typically r ≈ .65 to .75), confirming that individuals high in fundamentalism internalize their religious framework as their master-motive.
• Religious Quest: In line with theoretical expectations, the RRF displays moderate to strong negative correlations with Batson’s Religious Quest Scale (ranging from r = −.35 to −.52), demonstrating that fundamentalism actively opposes viewing religion as an open-ended, questioning, or doubt-embracing journey.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is evidenced by the scale’s divergent relationships when compared to generalized social dominance or non-ideological personality traits:

• The RRF shares only weak to modest associations with Felicia Pratto and Jim Sidanius’s Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) (typically r = .10 to .25), demonstrating that religious fundamentalism is conceptually independent of Machiavellian power dynamics and hierarchical dominance drives.
• Within the Five-Factor Model of personality, RRF scores correlate negatively with Openness to Experience (r ≈ −.25 to −.40), while demonstrating trivial to negligible correlations with Neuroticism and Extraversion.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

The scale possesses remarkable predictive utility regarding social attitudes, out-group prejudice, and scientific skepticism:

• Prejudice Against Sexual Minorities: Across hundreds of studies, the RRF consistently emerges as one of the single strongest positive predictors of negative attitudes, hostility, and opposition to civil rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) individuals (often exceeding r = .60). As demonstrated in Hester’s (2012) experimental work, exposure to religious anti-gay messages interacts with baseline RRF levels to intensify outgroup hostility.
• Ethnocentrism and Out-Group Derogation: When controlling for general religious devotion, high RRF scores systematically predict negative evaluations of non-believers, atheists, and followers of other world religions.
• Scientific Rejection: RRF scores reliably predict skepticism toward evolutionary biology, anthropogenic climate change, and evidence-based biomedical interventions, especially when secular findings conflict with scripture.

8. Reliability

The psychometric reliability of the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale is exceptional, particularly given its brevity of only 12 items.

Internal Consistency

In the seminal 2004 validation paper, Altemeyer and Hunsberger evaluated the 12-item revised scale across three independent Canadian samples:

• Sample 1 (Undergraduate University Students, N = 447): Cronbach’s alpha reached .92, matching the reliability of the original 20-item version (.92) despite having 40% fewer items.
• Sample 2 (Parents of University Students, N = 369): Cronbach’s alpha was .91.
• Sample 3 (Adult Community Sample, N = 187): Cronbach’s alpha achieved .93.

Subsequent independent replications internationally (e.g., across the United States, Europe, and Australia) consistently report Cronbach’s alpha values exceeding .90, rarely dipping below .88 in diverse participant demographics. Mean inter-item correlations typically fall cleanly within the optimal .40 to .55 range, demonstrating high coherence without redundant phrasing.

Test-Retest Stability

Longitudinal and test-retest evaluations over intervals ranging from four weeks to six months demonstrate high temporal stability, with test-retest correlation coefficients routinely falling between r = .82 and .89. Because the scale taps an overarching ideological and cognitive orientation rather than fluctuating mood states or situational beliefs, scores remain remarkably stable over time in the absence of profound life transitions or religious deconversion events.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive factor-analytic evaluations of the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale have substantiated its operationalization as an essentially unidimensional scale.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In their initial development of the 12-item instrument, Altemeyer and Hunsberger (2004) subjected the correlation matrix to principal component and common factor analyses. A single dominant general factor consistently accounts for approximately 50% to 58% of the total variance across samples. The scree plot shows a decisive break after the first eigenvalue (which regularly exceeds 6.0), with the second eigenvalue dropping sharply below 1.2, confirming the presence of a single overarching dimension.

All 12 items demonstrate robust factor loadings onto this primary factor, typically ranging from .55 to .82. No item exhibits an unacceptably low factor loading (< .40). Importantly, because the scale is balanced (six pro-trait items and six contrait items), EFA demonstrates that the positive and negative items load strongly and symmetrically on the primary latent factor, rather than bifurcating cleanly into separate method factors based on question valence.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Subsequent psychometric examinations using Confirmatory Factor Analysis have tested the unidimensional model against alternative bifactor and multidimensional configurations. While an unconstrained one-factor model occasionally exhibits modest strain due to minor residual covariances among identically valenced items (a well-known phenomenon in balanced scales with pro-trait and reverse-coded statements), a single-factor model specifying a method effect for reverse-coded items achieves exemplary goodness-of-fit indices:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): ≥ .96
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): ≥ .95
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ .055 (with 90% CI [.042, .068])
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ .038

These findings demonstrate that the underlying latent structure is substantively unidimensional, confirming that the 12 items measure a common psychological construct.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale (RRF)
• Authors: Bob Altemeyer, Ph.D. and Bruce Hunsberger, Ph.D. (2004)
• Original Longer Version: Religious Fundamentalism Scale (20 items; Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992)
• Construct Assessed: Religious fundamentalism (dogmatic belief in an absolute, inerrant religious truth that is opposed by evil forces and must be preserved against compromise)
• Format: Self-report questionnaire
• Administration Time: Approximately 3 to 5 minutes
• Number of Items: 12 items
• Scale Balance: Balanced for response sets — 6 pro-trait items (1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11) and 6 contrait/reverse-coded items (2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 12)
• Authentic Response Scale: 9-point asymmetric Likert-type scale spanning from −4 to +4 with an exact neutral zero point:
  • −4 = Very strongly disagree
  • −3 = Strongly disagree
  • −2 = Moderately disagree
  • −1 = Slightly disagree
  • 0 = Exactly and precisely neutral
  • +1 = Slightly agree
  • +2 = Moderately agree
  • +3 = Strongly agree
  • +4 = Very strongly agree
• Scoring and Transformation Rules:
  • Before computing total scores, the raw −4 to +4 ratings are mathematically recoded to a positive continuum from 1 to 9:
    (−4 → 1), (−3 → 2), (−2 → 3), (−1 → 4), (0 → 5), (+1 → 6), (+2 → 7), (+3 → 8), (+4 → 9).
  • Reverse Scoring: Items 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, and 12 must be reverse-coded prior to aggregation. On the 1-to-9 recoded scale, reverse scoring is calculated as: Recoded_Value_Reversed = 10 − Recoded_Value.
  • Total Score Calculation: Sum the recoded scores of all 12 items (or calculate the mean). Total summed scores range from 12 to 108. Higher scores indicate greater religious fundamentalism.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

Publication Year: The Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale was officially published in 2004 in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, refining their original 1992 20-item scale.

Permissions and Accessibility: In accordance with the academic traditions established by Bob Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger throughout their careers, the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale is in the public domain for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research. No licensing fees, formal permissions, or royalty payments are required to administer the scale in empirical investigations or university research settings, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution and citation are given to the authors (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 2004). Commercial use, test-battery publication, or integration into proprietary diagnostic platforms requires appropriate clearance through the copyright holder or publisher (Taylor & Francis).

12. References

Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-wing authoritarianism. University of Manitoba Press.

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

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

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

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

Duckitt, J. (2001). A cognitive-motivational theory of ideological attitudes. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 33, pp. 41–113). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(01)80004-6

Hester, N. (2012). Religious anti-gay messages’ effect on attitudes toward sexual and religious groups (Master’s thesis, Texas Tech University). Texas Tech University Libraries Repository. https://repositories.tdl.org/ttu-ir/handle/2346/45412

Hunsberger, B. (1995). Religion and prejudice: The role of religious fundamentalism, quest, and right-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Social Issues, 51(2), 113–129. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1995.tb01326.x

Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “Seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103(2), 263–283. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.103.2.263

Whitley, B. E., Jr. (2009). Religiosity and attitudes toward lesbians and gay men: A meta-analysis. International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 19(1), 21–38. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508610802471104

13. Items of the Scale