The Institute smuggled personality probes into innocent questionnaire items to reach hidden attitudes

Evidence

The Institute’s inquiry into the working class differed from these in one main respect: it had the disadvantage that although, for the sake of representativeness, it was not restricted to a small circle of persons known personally to the interviewer, it was nevertheless, for financial reasons, not able to carry out any in-depth interviews on the psychoanalytical model. The inquiry tried partly to compensate for this disadvantage by including in the questionnaire, which, with its 271 sections, was unusually comprehensive, apparently innocent questions which would permit conclusions to be drawn about hidden personality traits and attitudes. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 474 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

The aim of the project was to show that anti-Semitism is one of the dangers inherent in all more recent culture'. Historical research on mass movements since the Crusades, and on representatives of modern humanism such as Voltaire and Kant, were to show how deeply rooted anti-Semitism waseven in places where it had never been suspected. Experimentssuch as film presentationswere to expose latent anti-Semitic tendencies and serve to construct a typology, so that a tool would be available which would make it possible to detect the strength and quality of anti-Semitic tendencies deep in the most subconscious levels. In this way it would be possible to start combating them early enough. — <cite>Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1141</cite> (#corroborates`, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Frankfurt School’s worker survey used innocuous questions to reveal hidden personality traits — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 474; Measuring authoritarianism as attitudes allows disguising personality tests as opinion surveys. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3863; The Institute’s anti-Semitism project sought to expose latent tendencies at subconscious levels — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1141 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The Frankfurt School’s worker survey used innocuous questions to reveal hidden personality traits #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 474
• Measuring authoritarianism as attitudes allows disguising personality tests as opinion surveys. #expands (0.90) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3863
• The Institute’s anti-Semitism project sought to expose latent tendencies at subconscious levels #corroborates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1141
• Interviewers probed indirectly rather than asking subjects directly about sensitive topics #corroborates (0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 502
• Workers’ study coded answers as personality evidence before reading each questionnaire whole #expands (0.80)