Right-wing Authoritarianism - Assessment

Assessment

Right-wing authoritarianism is measured by the RWA scale. The first scored item on the scale states, "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us." People who strongly agree with this are showing a tendency toward authoritarian submission (Our country desperately needs a mighty leader), authoritarian aggression (who will do what has to be done to destroy), and conventionalism (the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us).

Psychometrically, the RWA scale was a significant improvement over the F-scale, which was the original measure of the authoritarian personality. The F-scale was worded so that agreement always indicated an authoritarian response, thus leaving it susceptible to the acquiescence response bias. The RWA scale is balanced to have an equal number of pro and anti authoritarian statements. The RWA scale also has excellent internal reliability, with coefficient alpha typically measuring between 0.85 and 0.94.

The RWA scale has been modified over the years, as many of the items lost their social significance as society changed. The current version is 22 items long, and can be found online.

Although Altemeyer has continually updated the scale, researchers in different domains have tended to lock-in on particular versions. For example in the social psychology of religion, the 1992 version of the scale is still commonly used,. In addition, the length of the earlier versions (30 items) led many researchers to develop shorter versions of the scale. Some of those are published but many researchers simply select a subset of items to use in their research; a practice that Altemeyer strongly criticizes.

The uni-dimensionality of the scale has also been challenged recently. Funke, for example, showed that it is possible to extract the three underlying dimensions of RWA if the double- and triple-barreled nature of the items is removed. Given the possibility of underlying dimensions emerging from the scale, it is then the case that the scale is no longer balanced, since all the items primarily capturing authoritarian aggression are pro-trait worded (higher scores mean more authoritarianism) and all the items primarily measuring conventionalism are con-trait worded (higher scores mean less authoritarianism). Work by Mavor, Louis and Sibley recently demonstrated that the existence of 2 or 3 factors in the RWA scale reflects real differences in these dimensions rather than acquiescence response bias.