All of us and each one of us are unique beings, who will live different lives and experience different situations. Also the way we see and interpret the world, and how we relate to the environment, is distinctive to each person. The same is true for our opinions and attitudes towards different areas and situations in life.

All this is of enormous interest to sciences such as psychology, which throughout its history has generated a large number of instruments and methods in order to measure and assess the existence of personality traits and the tendency to believe and value reality in certain ways. There are a large number of them, some of which are used to assess the degree of predisposition towards a particular personality type or trait. An example of the latter is the F scale, by Theodor Adorno , which aims to measure the predisposition to fascism and authoritarianism.

The F-scale of fascism

It is known as F scale an instrument of evaluation of the human personality created with the aim of generating a method that would allow the evaluation of the existence of what he called an authoritarian personality or, better said, of the tendency or predisposition to fascism (the F coming from the scale of this word).

This scale was born in 1947 by Adorno, Levinson, Frenkel-Brunswik and Sanford, after the end of World War II and having to live a long time in exile. The scale aims to evaluate the presence of a personality that allows the prediction of fascist tendencies from the measurement of prejudices and opinions contrary to democracy, seeking to assess the existence of an authoritarian personality.

Specifically, the test measures the existence of rigid adherence to the values of the middle class, the tendency to rejection and aggression towards those contrary to conventional values, harshness and concern for power and domination, superstition, opposition to the emotional or subjective and attachment to a rigid rationality, cynicism, the predisposition to consider the projection of impulses as the cause of situations of danger, the repulsion towards divergent sexuality, the idealization of one’s own group of belonging and authority and the submission to norms generated by it .

The authoritarian personality

The creation of the F scale starts first of all from the consideration of the existence of an authoritarian personality, a theory defended among others by Adorno, which can generate a tendency towards fascism .

This author considered that social attitudes and ideologies were to a certain extent part of personality, something that in the case of fascism could explain a type of personality tending towards conservatism, exaltation of the endo-group, aggressiveness and repulsion towards non-conventional values. Thus, although somewhat cultural , the emergence of attitudes such as fascism or democracy would be products of a personality type .

The author, with a psychoanalytical orientation, considered that the authoritarian personality is the product of an unconscious repression that is intended to be solved by intolerance. The authoritarian subject presents an extreme attitude derived from the outward projection of his own internal conflicts. For this philosopher, authoritarianism would be linked to neuroticism and a childhood being dominated .

Throughout his childhood, the subject has been subjected to a super-ego that has not allowed the child’s own ego (drives, desires and impulses) to develop normally, being insecure and needing a super-ego to guide his behavior. This will generate attitudes of domination and hostility to what the subject considers to be outside his group of belonging .

The characteristics of an authoritarian person are resentment, conventionalism, authoritarianism, rebellion and psychopathic aggressiveness, a tendency to compulsive intolerant and manic habits and manipulation of reality in order to develop a dictatorial stance .

A scientifically questionable scale

Although the scale is intended to provide a valid measurement tool, it is scientifically flawed with a number of features that have made it the subject of a wide range of criticism.

First of all, it is important to highlight the fact that, taking into account the bases from which it was elaborated, a concrete type of something is being pathologized that is not based on something psychiatric but on a type of concrete political attitude or ideology. It also highlights the fact that a person’s political opinion can be highly modifiable, something that does not seem to be taken into account.

Likewise, another reason for criticism is the fact that the items of the test were not previously tested , and that there are certain prejudices in its formulation that reduce its validity and objectivity. Nor are the items mutually exclusive, something that makes the interpretation of the test difficult and may either inflate or devalue its results. Likewise, its elaboration was subsidized by the American Jewish Committee, something that does not cease to be an element that implies the existence of a conflict of interests.

Another criticism is that the interviewer may use the results in a discriminatory manner, being an instrument with a certain burden of guilt and criminalization of the person evaluated depending on his/her results . Thus, the assessor is not totally partial during the interview.

A last criticism is made taking into account that the scale only values authoritarianism linked to right-wing political conservatism, not valuing the option of the existence of authoritarianisms by left-wing groups.

Bibliographic references:

Adorno, T. W.; Frenkel-Brunswik, E.; Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, N.R. (2006). The Authoritative Personality (Preface, Introduction and Conclusions). EMPIRIA. Journal of Social Science Methodology, 12:. 155-200. National University of Distance Education. Madrid, Spain.