The Attitudes Toward Masturbation Scale<\/strong> (ATMS), developed by Charlene L. Muehlenhard<\/a> and Chantal D. Young (2009) at the University of Kansas, represents an extensive psychometric instrument designed to capture the multidimensional, nuanced, and frequently conflicting cognitions, motivations, and affective responses individuals harbor regarding autosexual behavior. Earlier instruments, most notably Abramson and Mosher\u2019s (1975) Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation Inventory (NATMI<\/a>) and Miller and Lief\u2019s (1976) Masturbation Attitude Scale (MAS<\/a>), yielded unidimensional global scores and evaluated cultural or generalized attitudes toward masturbation in the abstract rather than an individual\u2019s personal, idiographic appraisals of their own behavior. The ATMS addresses these conceptual limitations through a comprehensive 179-item inventory organized into 28 subscales across three primary domains: (a) 13 Reasons for Wanting (or Being Tempted) to Masturbate<\/em> subscales, (b) 10 Reasons for Avoiding (or Trying to Avoid) Masturbating<\/em> subscales, and (c) 5 Feelings Related to Masturbation<\/em> subscales.<\/p>\n Responses are scored on 7-point Likert-type metric scales ranging from 0 (Not a Reason \/ Not at all<\/em>) to 6 (A Very Important Reason \/ Very Strongly<\/em>). The ATMS yields individual subscale scores as well as four broader composite scores: the Wanting Composite, Avoiding Composite, Negative-Feelings Composite, and Positive-Feelings Composite. Psychometric analyses demonstrate high internal consistency, with subscale Cronbach\u2019s alpha coefficients ranging from .71 to .97. Construct, criterion-related, and discriminant validities are evidenced by significant differences across actual behavioral engagement and gender cohorts, alongside empirical cluster analytic validation that delineates distinct motivational profiles: enthusiastic, lukewarm, high-guilt, and ambivalent. The ATMS provides sex researchers, clinical psychologists, and sex therapists with an empirically validated diagnostic and empirical tool applicable across diverse populations regardless of personal sexual history.<\/p>\n Attitudes Toward Masturbation Scale, ATMS, autosexuality, sexual attitudes, sexual guilt, psychometrics, factor analysis, human sexuality assessment, sexual motivations, Charlene Muehlenhard.<\/p>\n The Attitudes Toward Masturbation Scale was conceptualized, developed, and validated by:<\/p>\n Solitary sexual behavior represents one of the most prevalent yet culturally contested aspects of human sexuality. Despite historical shifts toward secularization and sexual liberation, autosexual behaviors remain steeped in cultural ambivalence, socioreligious prohibitions, and interpersonal shame. Prior to the development of the ATMS, sexological research relied predominantly on measures conceptualized during the mid-1970s. Abramson and Mosher\u2019s (1975) Negative Attitudes Toward Masturbation Inventory and Miller and Lief\u2019s (1976) Masturbation Attitude Scale provided foundational insight into sexual conservatism, but their psychometric structures suffered from two fatal limitations: they measured masturbation as an abstract societal construct rather than a personal experience, and they collapsed varied emotional reactions into a single global index of guilt or permissiveness.<\/p>\n The primary purpose of the ATMS is to capture the complex, multidimensional, and often paradoxically co-occurring thoughts, intentions, and emotional states that define individual autosexual experience. Grounded in motivational psychology and cognitive appraisal theory, the ATMS investigates not only why individuals choose to engage in masturbation, but also why they actively avoid or attempt to suppress it, alongside the exact affective aftermath of such behaviors. Crucially, the instrument was intentionally constructed so that it could be completed meaningfully by both sexually active individuals and individuals who have never masturbated or who actively abstain from doing so.<\/p>\n In clinical practice, the ATMS serves as an assessment tool for sex therapists, marital counselors, and clinical psychologists working with clients suffering from hypersexual distress, sexual aversion, orgasmic difficulties, or internalized moral conflict. By identifying whether avoidance stems from religious prohibitions, fears of negative social evaluation, somatic discomfort, or partnership dynamics, clinicians can tailor cognitive-behavioral interventions with precise therapeutic targets. In empirical research, the scale facilitates cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations into gender differences in sexuality, sociosexual development among emerging adults, the psychological correlates of religious deconstruction, and the relational impact of solitary sexual behaviors within romantic partnerships.<\/p>\n The ATMS conceptualizes attitudes toward masturbation as an intricate tri-component cognitive-affective-behavioral system comprising 28 distinct subscales organized across three meta-domains:<\/p>\n This domain captures the diverse internal drives, instrumental motives, and external prompts that compel an individual toward autosexual activity:<\/p>\n This domain measures the inhibitory mechanisms, normative barriers, and cognitive evaluations that restrain autosexual behavior:<\/p>\n This domain evaluates immediate post-behavioral (or anticipated) emotional reactions across five empirical clusters: Satisfaction<\/strong> (joy, relaxation, feeling refreshed, healthy, and physically in control), Guilt<\/strong> (remorse, moral compromise, feeling dirty, sinful, or pathetic), Anger<\/strong> (frustration, acute somatic irritability, aggression), Anxiety<\/strong> (nervousness, tension, awkwardness), and Indifference<\/strong> (emotional detachment, emptiness, passive neutrality).<\/p>\n The construction of the ATMS is grounded in several theoretical traditions across clinical psychology, cognitive science, and human sexology:<\/p>\n The ATMS operates under Richard Lazarus<\/a>\u2019s transactional model of stress and coping, alongside psychodynamic and cognitive formulations of attitudinal ambivalence. Traditional unidimensional attitude scales presume that positive and negative evaluations sit at opposite poles of a single continuum. In contrast, the ATMS models attitudes as bivariate constructs: an individual may concurrently endorse extreme levels of hedonic desire (Wanting) while simultaneously experiencing profound moral prohibition and affective guilt (Avoiding). This explains the psychological distress observed in individuals exhibiting “erotophobic ambivalence”\u2014wherein sexual appetite operates in direct cognitive collision with internalized socio-religious scripts.<\/p>\n Drawing on the sociological frameworks of John Gagnon<\/a> and William Simon (1973), the ATMS operationalizes how cultural scenarios, interpersonal scripts, and intrapsychic scripting dictate autosexual behavior. Cultural scripts historically construct autosexuality as pathological, immature, or a poor substitute for heterosexual coitus. The ATMS items explicitly dissect these cultural mandates (e.g., Adherence to Social Norms, Immorality, Detraction from Partner Sex) and contrast them with personal hedonic motivations (e.g., Self-Exploration, Somatic Release), mapping how individuals negotiate sociocultural restrictions against biological impulses.<\/p>\n From a behavioral perspective, the dual-system architecture of the ATMS mirrors Jeffrey Gray\u2019s Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory<\/a> (RST). The 13 Wanting subscales reflect activation of the Behavioral Approach System (BAS), driven by appetitive stimuli, reward pursuit, and tension reduction. Conversely, the 10 Avoiding subscales reflect activation of the Behavioral Inhibition System (BIS) and Fight-Flight-Freeze System (FFFS), governed by threat appraisal, punishment sensitivity, social exclusion fears, and conditioned moral anxiety.<\/p>\n The psychometric validity of the ATMS was established through extensive empirical evaluation across multiple independent samples:<\/p>\n Scale construction relied on an inductive, multi-stage empirical protocol. In Phase 1, an initial qualitative cohort of 236 undergraduate women and men answered open-ended essay questions regarding their attitudes, feelings, inhibitions, and motivations toward autosexuality. Researchers extracted core experiential themes and synthesized them with historical literature (e.g., Clifford, 1978; Elliott & Brantley, 1997). This generated a 223-item prototype, ensuring comprehensive semantic coverage and high face validity across diverse sexual phenomenologies.<\/p>\n In Phase 2, Young and Muehlenhard (2009) administered the inventory to 518 undergraduate students (stratified by biological sex and masturbatory experience). Criterion-related validity was established by comparing individuals who regularly masturbated against non-masturbators:<\/p>\n In an independent replication study, Stroupe (2008) examined 210 women to determine the relationship between autosexual attitudes and orgasmic functioning. Women who had never masturbated scored significantly lower on the Wanting Composite and Positive-Feelings Composite and significantly higher on the Avoiding Composite and Negative-Feelings Composite compared to women with consistent autosexual experience. Women reporting infrequent autosexual behavior yielded exact intermediate mean values, confirming a clean linear dose-response relationship between attitudinal valence and behavioral frequency.<\/p>\n Validation data conformed robustly to established meta-analytic patterns regarding gender disparities in autosexuality (Oliver & Hyde, 1993<\/a>; Petersen & Hyde, 2007). Men scored significantly higher on 18 of the 28 subscales, reflecting stronger approach motivations and lower moral avoidance. However, when statistically controlling for lifetime masturbation status, critical nuanced divergence emerged: women scored significantly higher on Self-Exploration and Improvement<\/em>, Avoidance of Partner Sex<\/em>, and Pleasure of Partner<\/em> among Wanting scales, while scoring significantly higher on No Desire or Interest<\/em>, Fear of Negative Social Evaluation<\/em>, Sex Negativity<\/em>, and Anxiety<\/em> among Avoiding scales.<\/p>\n Young and Muehlenhard (2009) conducted a person-centered k-means cluster analysis on subscale profiles, isolating four distinct psychological phenotypes:<\/p>\n The ATMS demonstrates excellent internal consistency across its 28 subscales and four composite indices:<\/p>\n The structural validity of the ATMS was verified via systematic principal components analysis (PCA) accompanied by oblique (Promax) and orthogonal (Varimax) factor rotations conducted during the scale derivation phase:<\/p>\n From the initial 223 pilot items, 44 items were eliminated due to low factor loadings ($< .40$<\/span>), cross-loadings across divergent theoretical domains ($> .30$<\/span> discrepancy failure), or substantial degradation of subscale Cronbach\u2019s alpha. The resulting 179 items resolved into a stable 28-factor architecture nested within three empirically discrete categories:<\/p>\n Inter-factor correlations confirmed that while subscales within each broad domain correlate moderately (e.g., Immorality and Fear of Social Evaluation, $r = .54$<\/span>), they retain substantial unique variance, validating their treatment as 28 separate subscales rather than a collapsed unidimensional construct.<\/p>\n The complete technical profile for administering, interpreting, and scoring the Attitudes Toward Masturbation Scale is structured as follows:<\/p>\n The Attitudes Toward Masturbation Scale was finalized in 2009<\/strong> by Chantal D. Young and Charlene L. Muehlenhard at the University of Kansas. The instrument is placed in the public domain for scholarly, empirical, educational, and clinical applications. No licensing fees or formal permissions are required<\/strong> for academic or clinical usage, provided the authors are appropriately cited in all publications, dissertations, and conference presentations. Clinicians and researchers utilizing the scale are encouraged to contact Dr. Charlene L. Muehlenhard at the Department of Psychology, University of Kansas (charlene@ku.edu<\/a>) with research summaries and psychometric updates.<\/p>\nKeywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Reasons for Wanting to Masturbate (13 Subscales)<\/h3>\n
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2. Reasons for Avoiding Masturbation (10 Subscales)<\/h3>\n
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3. Feelings Related to Masturbation (5 Subscales)<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
Cognitive Appraisal and Ambivalence Models<\/h3>\n
Sexual Scripting Theory<\/h3>\n
Behavioral Incentive and Avoidance Motivation<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Content and Face Validity<\/h3>\n
Construct and Criterion-Related Validity<\/h3>\n
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Known-Groups and Divergent Validity: Gender Profiles<\/h3>\n
Typological Validation via Cluster Analysis<\/h3>\n
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Reliability<\/h2>\n
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Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Item Retention Criteria<\/h3>\n
Factor Architecture of the Three Domains<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n