Measuring authoritarianism as attitudes allows disguising personality tests as opinion surveys.

Evidence

Defining right-wing authoritarianism as a set of attitudes means that it should be measured with an attitude scale. This brings an immediate advantage, since personality tests traditionally are phrased in the first person (e.g., “I have strange thoughts while in the bathtub”), and attitude surveys usually are not (“Bathtubs should keep to ‘their place’ in a house”). Thus, a personality test involving attitudes can easily be passed off as an opinion survey. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3863

Categorization

• CANDY: The bathtub example is genuinely funny and tweetable.
• XREF: connects to: Research concealment affected how student political attitudes were measured — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2334; The Frankfurt School’s worker survey used innocuous questions to reveal hidden personality traits — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 474; The F-scale measured how deeply ethnocentric attitudes were rooted in personality structure. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1769