A better measurement instrument resurrected a nearly dead research program.

Evidence

The accumulation of methodological concerns almost killed off the study of authoritarianism as a personality variable, but Robert Altemeyer (1981, 1988) singlehandedly revitalized the topic by developing a new instrument called the right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) scale. The RWA scale was relatively free from problems of measurement bias and directly measured three components theorized to be part of the syndrome: authoritarian submission, conventionalism, and punitiveness toward deviants. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 110

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the three components of right-wing authoritarianism: submission, conventionalism, punitiveness toward deviants.