Attitudes About Reality Scale (AAR)

Unger, R. K., Draper, R. D., & Pendergrass, M. L. (1986). Personal Epistemology and Personal Experience. Journal of Social Issues, 42(2), 67-79. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1986.tb00225.x

Measure: AAR_SCALE2001.doc

Scoring instructions:

• All items are scored with agree very much = 7 disagree very much =1 except the following items which are scored in the reverse direction (eg., agree very much =1 and disagree very mcuh = 7). These reverse scored items (12 in all) are: # 1, 4, 5, 16, 19, 27, 28, 30, 33, 35, 36, and 39.

	Table of Contents
	Description
	History of Use
	References

Description:

Purpose		The AAR was designed to assess world view. It distinguishes between: Social constructionism is associated with beliefs in a changeable and definition-dependent reality, environmental causality, and societal control. Logical positivism is associated with beliefs in a stable and irreversible reality, biological causality, individualistic control, and acceptance of status quo.
Questions		40 items using 7-point ratings (1 = disagree almost completely to 7 = agree almost completely) (There is also a 28-item short version.)
Sub-scales		N/A
Domain
Psychometrics
Sample items		Who has power is a central issue in understanding how society works. (reverse scored) Science has underestimated the extent to which genes affect human behavior.

References:

Scale:

Unger, R. K., Draper, R. D., & Pendergrass, M. L. (1986). Personal Epistemology and Personal Experience. Journal of Social Issues, 42(2), 67-79. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1986.tb00225.x

Scale Validation:

Draper, R. D. (1990). Discriminant and convergent validity of the Attitudes about Reality Scale. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Boston, MA.

Evans, W. J. (2000). Construct validity of the Attitudes About Reality Scale. Psychological Reports, 86(3), 738-744.

Uses:

Columbus, P. J. (1993). Attitudes about reality and college students' opinions about nuclear war. Psychological Reports, 73(1), 249-250.

Unger, R. K. (2002). Them and Us: Hidden Ideologies-Differences in Degree or Kind? Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2(1), 43-52. doi: 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2002.00025.x

Unger, R. K., Gareis, K. C., & Locher, P. J. (2007). Positivism and patriotic militancy: The influence of covert ideologies on students' reactions to September 11, 2001. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 13(2), 201 - 220. doi: 10.1080/10781910701271267

Magee, R. G., & Kalyanaraman, S. (2009). Effects of worldview and mortality salience in persuasion processes. Media Psychology, 12(2), 171 - 194. doi: 10.1080/10781910701271267

Magee, R., & Kalyanaraman, S. (2010). The perceived moral qualities of web sites: implications for persuasion processes in human-computer interaction. Ethics and Information Technology, 12(2), 109-125. doi: 10.1007/s10676-009-9210-1

*