These results – the high reliability of the two main scales, the intercorrelation of the subparts, and particularly the inter correlation between the scales – appear to point to a common factor among them. Consequently Adorno, like Sartre, Fromm, and Hoffer, postulated a universal prejudicial factor. Adorno concluded that one can speak of a general attitude of out-group rejection and acceptance, of which attitudes toward particular groups are a part. Authors of The Authoritarian Personality (1950, p. 122) concluded that “it is the total ethnocentric ideology, rather than prejudice against any single group, which requires explanation.”
To the investigators, however, it soon became evident that ethnocentrism itself, far from being an independent category had its roots in the deeper psychological dispositions of the personality. Thus, in postulating a universal prejudice one is immediately confronted with the problem of finding or hypothesizing the linking underlying factor which motivates this prejudice. The California group sought the nature of this psychological disposition by employing clinical studies; they extensively interviewed those individuals who scored either very high -or very low on the A-Sand E Scales.
Drawing upon interpretations derived from these interviews, Adorno, et al, undertook to construct a scale which dealt with matters· of a general, less-directed content, which might be significantly related to the earlier scales-and which could lay bare the styles of feeling· and thinking responsible for prejudice and tolerance. They constructed an F (Fascism) scale, the aim of which was to touch upon the personal roots of antidemocratic trends. The authors postulated various components which made up the Fascistic or anti-democratic syndrome.
These assumed components were: (1) Conventionalism: the superficial and rigid adherence to conventionality based not upon conviction but instead \ upon external adoption of prevailing values in response to social pressure; (2) Authoritarian submission: a syndrome component similar to the irrational authoritarianism postulated by Fromm, i.e. an emotional need to be subservient to a strong superior in lieu of the establishment of an inner source of authority and autonomy. As Fromm postulated, hostility displacement. upon others often arises from such a situation, hence the next component; (3) Authoritarian aggression: arising not only from the hostility concurrent with submission but also from hostility inherent in the all-too-strict confines of conventionality; (4) Devaluation of the human and animate and an overevaluation of physical things and that which is inanimate; (5) Superstition: a tendency to assign responsibility, for events to external, frequently supernatural, causes; and (6) Destructiveness and Cynicism: arising .from the individual’s lack of self-esteem and need to externalize his self-hatred.
The resulting scale developed by the California group turned out to be as reliable as the Anti-69mitio and. Ethnocentric scales (r .78). Its correlations with the ethnocentrism scale and with the anti-Semitism scale were positive but rather low (r=.77). Later studies on the correlation between the E and F scales varied a great deal as to results. We can therefore only tentatively speak about a common factor between Authoritarianism and Ethnocentrism. and cannot at this time speak about any definite factors.
