The F Scale’s tie to actual fascist party affiliation was never demonstrated

Evidence

The best measure of authoritarianism is the F Scale. It is objective and quantitative and much easier to use than interview protocols or projective data. However, the F Scale was characterized by the authors in two ways: 1) As a means of identifying fascistic proclivities or an authoritarianism of the right; 2) as a means of identifying authoritarianism in general and this presumably could be of the left as well as of the right. The authors do not actually demonstrate a connection between F Scale scores and affiliation with fascistic political parties. The three inmates of San Quentin who were called fas-cists were so labelled by the researchers because of their violently antidemocratic views rather than because they were members of a fascist party. We shall first inquire whether the F Scale can identify genuine political fascists to see if it is a measure of authoritarianism of the right. If it is we shall then want to know whether it is only a measure of authoritarianism of the right or whether it can also identify authoritarians of the left—if such there be. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 654

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The F Scale’s validity sparked a lasting methodological controversy — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 743; Researchers never tested Holocaust perpetrators with the F Scale itself — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 459