F-scale

F-scale

The F-scale is a personality test (psychometric assessment) that attempts to quantify authoritarian tendencies. The F-scale was designed on the basis of Frankfurt School Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno's theory of authoritarian personality. [Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). "The authoritarian personality". New York: Harper and Row.] The "F" stands for "fascism."

The test is designed to measure several variables, including conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotype, power and "toughness," destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and sex.

Robert Altemeyer's Right Wing Authoritarianism Scale revised and refined the work of the F-Scale, and is today the most influential measurement of authoritarianism.Fact|date=May 2008

Criticisms

Among the criticisms of the F-scale is its sensitivity to respondents with acquiescent response styles. A number of related scales such as the Wilson-Patterson Conservatism Scale, P-scale and the Balanced F-scale have been created in an attempt to fix the shortcomings of the F-scale.

Adorno's Marxist background has led conservatives to question his examination of authoritarianism from right-wing sources. Created in response to Nazi Germany, as a method to predict and therefore possibly prevent the rise of fascism in other societies, the F-scale associates authoritarianism with fascism and Nazism. This pathologization of fascism implicitly discredits authoritarian right-wing movements. As such it has been denounced by conservatives, who tactically attempt to lay ownership to the "freedom" motto and who prefer to associate un-freedom with societies that developed out of anti-capitalist movements.

For example, in order to valorize conservatism, right-wing Austrian School economist and early promoter of neoliberalism Friedrich von Hayek claimed that Nazism grew out of the post-World War I collectivism rather from a sense of conservatism.

References

External links

* [http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htm An F-test sample]


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