Development and validation of the Beliefs about Revenge Pornography Questionnaire

Abstract

Revenge pornography has become an increasingly prominent topic in social and legislative discussions about sexual crime, but has received relatively little attention within psychological research. Here, we leveraged existing theorizing in the area of sexual offending proclivity to systematically develop and validate of a measure of beliefs about revenge pornography. Using a large international community sample (N = 511) we found our ‘Beliefs about Revenge Pornography Questionnaire (BRPQ)’ to be comprised of three underpinning domains: ‘Victims as Responsible’, ‘Sociological Explanations’, and ‘Revenge Pornography as a Sexual Offense’. Concurrent validity is demonstrated through relationships with trait empathy, belief in a just world, dark personality traits, and rape myth acceptance. Randomly dividing the sample, we also show that the BRPQ predicts both revenge pornography proclivity (n = 227) and social judgements of this type of offending (n = 233). Implications and future directions are discussed.