Acquiescence bias, not true authoritarianism, may bind together authoritarianism and ethnocentrism scales

Evidence

And finally, since the Ethnocentrism Scale also consists entirely of protrait items, we have a pretty good idea of what mostly bound these three scales together. We do not know what the relationship among these constructs would be if response sets were controlled, except that they would be much, much lower (Campbell, Siegman, and Rees, 1967; RWA, pp. 26-35). — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2581

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A methodological confession that a major share of the vaunted authoritarianism-prejudice correlation could be an artifact of agreement response set — casting doubt on a whole research tradition.
• QUESTION: Does Altemeyer’s own RWA scale control for acquiescence well enough to escape this artifact? Worth checking.