Development of the White Innocence Legitimizing Beliefs Scale

This article reports the development and psychometric properties of the White Innocence Legitimizing Beliefs Scale, a measure designed to assess the degree to which an individual White person perceives White privilege applies to them, regardless of the extent to which they acknowledge the presence of White privilege in society. Across two studies, using samples of U.S. adults and college students, results provided evidence for this new measure's reliability and validity. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a hierarchical model with a superordinate factor (White innocence legitimization) and three factors that correspond to three subscales: Hard Work (rather than White privilege, as a contributor to one's successes), Personal Hardship (which proves that White privilege has not been beneficial to oneself), and Distancing from Whiteness (racial privilege is less applicable to oneself). Evidence of reliability was demonstrated by high α coefficients and test-retest reliability. Convergent, discriminant, criterion-related, and incremental evidence of validity was also demonstrated. Considering these results, the conceptual, methodological, and practical contributions of the White Innocence Legitimizing Beliefs Scale to counseling psychology are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).