Challenging a pivotal F Scale claim, authoritarianism does not reliably predict superstition

Evidence

But did the number of ghost stories also increase? Were there more articles about dowsers, fortune tellers, vampires, numerology, and “lucky signs”? I also am bothered that researchers can find archival evidence for things that are probably not there. The Berkeley theory (the one from the university, not Busby) did state that superstition was an integral part of the authoritarian personality. But the “superstition” items on the F Scale (which included an item specifically about astrology) never correlated highly with the core of the test. I know of no literature demonstrating that people scoring high on the F Scale were highly superstitious—unless you want categorically to equate being religious with being superstitious (which I would not). Certain famous right-wing individuals may believe in astrology, but you can “prove” anything with individual cases. We shall see in the next chapter that High RWA students are not particularly likely to believe in astrology, perhaps because it is often condemned by religions. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 4114

Categorization

• XREF: Challenges the Berkeley Authoritarian Personality’s ‘superstition’ component that Whitehead & Perry and other Christian-nationalism scholarship may rely on for the authoritarian-religiosity link.
• SHARE: For anyone working on the authoritarian personality construct who assumes superstition is core to it — here it never correlated with the F Scale core.