# RWA Scale The Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale is the psychometric instrument developed by [[Bob Altemeyer]] in his 1981 book *Right-Wing Authoritarianism* and revised in subsequent works (*Enemies of Freedom* 1988, *The Authoritarian Specter* 1996). It replaced the [[F-Scale]] as the dominant measure of authoritarian personality dispositions and has been the workhorse instrument in empirical authoritarianism research for over four decades. The existing vault Terminology entry [[Right-Wing Authoritarianism]] covers the broader construct and its political implications; this page focuses on the instrument itself — what it measures, how, and why it matters methodologically. ## What It Measures The RWA Scale assesses three interlocking trait clusters that Altemeyer distilled from [[Theodor Adorno]]'s original nine F-Scale dimensions: **Authoritarian submission** — uncritical, willing deference to perceived legitimate in-group authorities. Not submission to any authority, but to *established* authority within the subject's own social group. This is the follower dimension: the disposition to trust, obey, and defend the leader. **Authoritarian aggression** — willingness to inflict harm on others when that aggression is perceived as sanctioned by established authority. Directed at out-groups, rule-breakers, and norm-violators. The targets shift with context — the underlying disposition is the readiness to aggress with permission. **Conventionalism** — rigid adherence to the social norms and traditions endorsed by established authority. Not conservatism in the Burkean sense (cautious institutional stewardship) but a moralized insistence that *everyone* conform to traditional norms, with punitive attitudes toward those who don't. [[Karen Stenner]] later formalized this distinction: authoritarianism is intolerance of *difference*, conservatism is resistance to *change* — related but separable dispositions. ## How It Works The standard RWA Scale (RWA-22 in its most common version) presents respondents with statements like: - "Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us." (submission + aggression) - "There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action." (aggression) - "The 'old-fashioned ways' and 'old-fashioned values' still show the best way to live." (conventionalism) Respondents rate agreement on a 1–9 Likert scale. Critically — and this was Altemeyer's core methodological fix — items are balanced: roughly half are keyed in the authoritarian direction and half are reverse-coded. This eliminated the acquiescence bias that had fatally compromised the [[F-Scale]], where agreement with any statement produced a higher authoritarianism score regardless of content. Scores are summed across items. High scorers cluster in the top quintile and tend to display the syndrome consistently across all three dimensions — the trait clusters cohere as a syndrome, not as independent variables. ## Why It Replaced the F-Scale Altemeyer rebuilt the approach from scratch because the [[F-Scale]] had three critical flaws: acquiescence bias (all items keyed one direction), psychoanalytic interpretive baggage (Freudian explanations for the syndrome's origins), and poor factor structure (the nine dimensions didn't replicate cleanly). The RWA Scale addressed all three while preserving Adorno's core insight that submission, aggression, and conventionalism form a coherent personality syndrome. The result was an instrument that replicated reliably across samples, cultures, and decades — one of the most robust individual-difference measures in [[Political Psychology]]. ## Key Findings The empirical literature built on the RWA Scale is enormous. Among the most significant findings: **Prejudice prediction.** RWA scores predict prejudice against racial minorities, immigrants, LGBT people, and religious out-groups. The effect is large and stable across studies, decades, and countries. **The SDO interaction.** When combined with [[Social Dominance Theory]]'s SDO scale (developed by [[Jim Sidanius]] and [[Felicia Pratto]]), RWA predicts prejudice multiplicatively. People high on both scales — what Altemeyer called [[Double Highs]] — show the most extreme prejudice, the greatest willingness to support political violence, and the most [[Machiavellianism]] in political behavior. The two scales measure different psychological pathways to authoritarianism: RWA captures the follower's threat-driven submission; SDO captures the leader's desire to dominate. **Religious fundamentalism.** Altemeyer and Bruce Hunsberger found that religious fundamentalism is one of the strongest single predictors of RWA scores — and that the relationship is bidirectional: high-RWA individuals seek out fundamentalist religious environments, and those environments reinforce authoritarian dispositions. **Activation dynamics.** [[Karen Stenner]]'s *[[The Authoritarian Dynamic]]* (2005) demonstrated that RWA measures a *latent disposition* that activates under perceived normative threat — when people feel that the in-group's oneness and sameness is being challenged. This explained why authoritarian sentiment spikes during periods of social change without requiring a change in the underlying distribution of dispositions. ## Criticisms **The "right-wing" naming controversy.** Critics have argued that calling the scale "right-wing" makes it sound partisan rather than scientific. Altemeyer's response: "right-wing" in this context means psychologically aligned with *established* authority in *whatever* cultural context — Soviet high-RWA scorers supported the Communist Party. The label describes the direction of the disposition (toward established authority), not a partisan affiliation. The 2022 Left-Wing Authoritarianism (LWA) scale (Costello et al.) demonstrated that a parallel syndrome exists on the left, though with a weaker predictive relationship to anti-democratic behavior in U.S. samples. **Cultural generalizability.** The scale was developed and primarily validated in Western democracies. Cross-cultural replication is growing but uneven, and some researchers question whether the three-cluster structure holds in non-Western contexts. **Construct overlap.** Some critics argue that the scale's items partly measure the political attitudes it claims to predict, creating a circularity problem. Defenders counter that measuring dispositions toward authority and conventionalism in the abstract, then finding they predict specific political outcomes, is the substantive finding. ## See Also - [[Bob Altemeyer]] — the scale's developer - [[F-Scale]] — the predecessor instrument it replaced - [[The Authoritarian Personality]] — Adorno's foundational study - [[Right-Wing Authoritarianism]] — the broader construct (Terminology entry) - [[Karen Stenner]] — activation dynamics and the authoritarianism/conservatism distinction - [[Social Dominance Theory]] — the complementary SDO framework - [[Double Highs]] — the high-RWA + high-SDO personality profile - [[Authoritarian Personality Theory]] — the research tradition - [[Authoritarianism]] — subject hub