Brazilian validation links revictimizer racism scale to ideology and demographics

A study of 272 Brazilian adults found that the Revictimizer Racism Scale (RRS), designed to measure the belief that Black people exploit narratives of victimhood, had a unidimensional structure and high internal consistency. The instrument also showed measurement invariance across gender, race and political orientation, while higher scores were associated with being male, older, less educated and politically right-leaning. Together, the results support the RRS as a measure of a subtle form of prejudice, although the study cannot establish that the measured characteristics cause the attitudes reflected in its scores.

The research addresses accusations that Black people exploit victimhood narratives as a manifestation of racism that may coexist with contemporary social norms. Researchers assessed the RRS through several complementary psychometric features: its internal structure, reliability, relationships with external variables and measurement invariance. This combination allowed the investigators to examine whether the items formed a single underlying construct and whether the scale could be used to compare results among groups defined by gender, race and political orientation.

The analyses supported a unidimensional factor structure and high internal consistency for the RRS. Measurement invariance across gender, race and political orientation also supported the scale’s use in group comparisons: its items appeared to function consistently across those groups. The researchers described the findings as evidence that the RRS has strong validity and reliability for measuring revictimizer racism in the Brazilian context.

The results concern the instrument’s performance in this sample of 272 adults and do not demonstrate that the scale captures every aspect of racial prejudice or that its findings necessarily extend to other populations. Participants with higher RRS scores were more likely to be men and to identify with the political right. Scores were also associated with older age, lower educational attainment, stronger beliefs in competition between White and Black people for resources, greater perceived exposure to ethnically diverse environments, less support for racial quota policies, and a lower internal motivation and greater external motivation to respond without prejudice.

These are reported associations rather than experimental effects: the study does not show that political orientation, education, age or any other measured variable independently causes higher revictimizer-racism scores. A regression model integrating the measured sociodemographic, psychosocial and attitudinal variables explained 50% of the variance in RRS scores. That value describes the combined model’s explanatory performance in this sample; it does not establish the causal influence of any single factor.

Overall, the study provides evidence that the RRS can serve as a reliable and structurally sound instrument for examining a subtle manifestation of racism in Brazil. The strongest claims remain limited to the scale’s psychometric performance and the observed relationships among scores, demographic characteristics and attitudes in the 272-participant sample.

Subject of Research: Psychometric validation and social correlates of revictimizer racism among Brazilian adults

Article Title: Psychometric properties and social correlates of the revictimizer racism scale in the brazilian context

Article References: de Moraes, R., Jr., Bernardino, L. G., Gonçalves, E., Aldunate, N., & de Sá, L. G. C. (2026). Psychometric properties and social correlates of the revictimizer racism scale in the brazilian context. BMC Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05537-8

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05537-8

Keywords: psychometrics, racism measurement, Revictimizer Racism Scale, Brazil, political orientation, social attitudes, measurement invariance, internal consistency, regression, ordinal data, Psychometric, properties