The F scale collapsed partly because all items were positively worded, inflating acquiescence

Evidence

Adorno et al.’s great contribution was their famous F scale to measure the authoritarian personality and their extensive research showing that it correlated powerfully with anti-Semitism, generalized prejudice against minorities, chauvinistic nationalism, politico-economic conservatism, and right-wing extremism. Despite enormous initial interest, however, interest in this perspective and the F scale largely collapsed by the late 1960s. First, the psychodynamic processes (repressed and displaced aggression) on which the theory was built received little empirical support. Second, and perhaps most critically, the F scale was shown to be a psychometrically weak measure. When acquiescence due to the uniformly positive formulation of its items was controlled the F scale was neither adequately reliable nor unidimensional (Altemeyer, 1981). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2441

Adorno et al.’s great contribution was their famous F scale to measure the authoritarian personality and their extensive research showing that it correlated powerfully with anti-Semitism, generalized prejudice against minorities, chauvinistic nationalism, politico-economic conservatism, and right-wing extremism. Despite enormous initial interest, however, interest in this perspective and the F scale largely collapsed by the late 1960s. First, the psychodynamic processes (repressed and displaced aggression) on which the theory was built received little empirical support. Second, and perhaps most critically, the F scale was shown to be a psychometrically weak measure. When acquiescence due to the uniformly positive formulation of its items was controlled the F scale was neither adequately reliable nor unidimensional (Altemeyer, 1981). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2441

Categorization

• SEED: Could be an essay angle: how response-acquiescence bias quietly invalidated one of the 20th century’s most cited instruments.
• XREF: A concrete instance of how scale construction artifacts can sink a research program; connects to measurement-methodology concerns across psychology.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2441; John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 2441