The F scale: the measurement test of fascism
Each and every one of us are unique beings, who are going to 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 of each person. The same happens with our opinions and attitudes towards the different spheres and situations of life.
All this is of enormous interest for sciences such as psychology, which throughout its history has generated a large number of instruments and methods in order to measure and value the existence of personality traits and the tendency to believe and value the reality of certain ways. There are a large number of them, some of which are used to assess the degree of predisposition towards a type of personality or a specific trait. An example of the latter is The F Scale by Theodor Adorno, which aims to measure the predisposition to fascism and authoritarianism.
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The F Scale of Fascism
The F scale is known as an evaluation instrument of human personality created with the aim of generating a method that would allow assessing 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 the Second World War and having to live in exile for a long time. The scale aims to assess the presence of a personality that makes it possible to predict 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 towards rejection and aggression towards those contrary to values conventions, harshness and concern for power and domination, superstition, opposition to what is emotional or subjective and adherence to a rigid rationality, the cynicism, the predisposition to consider the projection of impulses as the cause of dangerous situations, the rejection of divergent sexuality, the idealization of one's own group of belonging and authority and submission to norms generated by this.
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The authoritarian personality
The creation of the F scale starts 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 some extent part of the personality, something that in the case of fascism could explain a type of personality tending to conservatism, exaltation of the ingroup, aggressiveness, and rejection of values that are not conventional. So, although somewhat cultural the emergence of attitudes such as fascism or democracy would be products of a type of personality.
The author, with a psychoanalytic orientation, considered that the authoritarian personality is the product of an unconscious repression that is intended to be resolved through intolerance. The authoritarian subject presents an extreme attitude derived from the projection towards the outside 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 superego and has not allowed the ego (drives, desires and impulses) of the child himself to develop normally, being insecure and requiring a superego to guide his conduct. This will cause them to generate attitudes of domination and hostility to what the subject considers outside of his or her group of belonging.
The characteristics of an authoritarian person are resentment, conventionality, authoritarianism, rebellion and psychopathic aggressiveness, tendency towards compulsiveness of intolerant and maniacal habits and manipulation of the reality in pursuit of developing a dictatorial stance.
A scientifically debatable scale
Despite the fact that the scale claims to offer a valid measurement instrument, the truth is that Scientifically, it suffers from a series of characteristics that have made it the object of a wide variety of of criticism.
In the first place, the fact stands out that taking into account the bases from which it was elaborated, a specific type of something is being pathologised that is not based on something psychiatric but in a type of concrete political attitude or ideology. It also highlights the fact that a person's political opinion can be highly modifiable, something it doesn't seem to take into account.
Likewise, another reason for criticism is the fact that the test items were not previously tested, and that there are certain prejudices in its formulation that reduce its validity and objectivity. The items are not mutually exclusive either, something that makes the interpretation of the test difficult and can either inflate or devalue its results. Likewise, its preparation was subsidized by the North American Jewish Committee, something that is still an element that implies the existence of a conflict of interest.
Another criticism is that the interviewer can use the results in a discriminatory way, being an instrument with a certain load of blame and criminalization of the evaluated depending on their results. Thus, the evaluator is not totally biased during his passage.
A final criticism is made taking into account that the scale only assesses authoritarianism linked to right-wing political conservatism, not considering the option of authoritarianism on the part of groups leftists.
Bibliographic references:
Adorno, T. W.; Frenkel-Brunswik, E.; Levinson, D.J. & Sanford, N.R. (2006). The Authoritarian Personality (Preface, Introduction and Conclusions). EMPIRIA. Journal of Methodology of the Social Sciences, 12:. 155-200. National University of Distance Education. Madrid Spain.
