IPIP BIS/BAS behavioral inhibition and activation scales
A 36-item public-domain measure of temperament based on Gray's model: the Behavioral Inhibition System (Anxiety) and three Behavioral Activation System dimensions — Drive, Fun-seeking, and Reward Responsiveness.
At a glance
Detailed write-up pending
A full, citation-backed scientific write-up for this scale — overview, clinical use, and psychometrics in the voice of a dissertation "Measures" section — has not yet been authored. To honor the platform's no-fabricated-sources rule, this page currently shows only the verified registry facts above (item count, structure, scoring, and any published norms). No validity coefficients, reliability figures, or citations are shown here that cannot be traced to a named source; the authored write-up will be added once its sources have been read and recorded in the plan-integrity file.
Subscales
Anxiety (BIS) 10 items
how strongly you react to the possibility of punishment or things going wrong
Fun-seeking (BAS) 10 items
how much you seek out new rewards and act on impulse
Drive (BAS) 10 items
how persistently you pursue goals you want
Reward Responsiveness (BAS) 6 items
how strongly you respond to pleasant and rewarding things
Example item
“Worry about what people think of me.”
Illustrative only. During administration items are presented one screen-set at a time; response-key direction is never shown to respondents.
Scoring & interpretation
Item responses are summed within each scale (reverse-keyed items recoded first) and expressed as a population percentile against the cited reference sample, with a reliability-based confidence range where α is published.
Psychometrics & norms
| Scale | M | SD | N | α | Metric |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anxiety (BIS) | 26.88 | 7.55 | 476 | 0.84 | summed raw |
| Drive (BAS) | 28.52 | 6.31 | 490 | 0.78 | summed raw |
| Reward Responsiveness (BAS) | 20.27 | 3.77 | 575 | 0.67 | summed raw |
Norms computed from the Eugene-Springfield Community Sample (ESCS) — Lewis R. Goldberg’s adult community panel from Eugene and Springfield, Oregon (Harvard Dataverse, doi:10.7910/DVN/UF52WY). This is a community sample and is NOT nationally representative. The mean, standard deviation, reference N and Cronbach’s α were computed directly from the raw IPIP item-level responses on THIS scale’s exact item set and reverse-keying (complete cases); reference N varies by scale and is shown with each scale below. The confidence range uses the standard error of measurement (SEM = SD·√(1−α)) from that computed α.
Source & citation
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., & Gough, H. G. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public-domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(1), 84–96. IPIP scales representing the BIS/BAS constructs of Carver & White (1994), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(2), 319–333.