Right-wing authoritarianism scale scores outperform typical personality tests on predictive validity

Evidence

Mischel (1968) once observed (unfairly; I think: RWA, pp. 7-10) that personality tests almost never correlate above . with criterion behaviors. Well, nearly all of the correlations on the preceding pages came in higher than that. In fact most of the associations, across quite a range of variables, landed in the .40-. domain that behavioral scientists often call “strong relationships.” Furthermore, you can find correlations over . on most of the pages of this review. (You will have trouble finding many psychological tests that have produced such strong relationships with such an array of variables.) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 516

Categorization

• XREF: The Mischel critique (that personality tests rarely exceed .3 correlations) is the classic situationism argument — this nullifies that long-standing critique.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: was this high average in part because many items overlap with the criterion content itself (the ‘catching fish in a barrel’ issue he admits in the next paragraph)?