Fascist Attitudes Scale

1. Abstract

The Fascist Attitudes Scale (FAS), developed by pioneering social and industrial psychologist Ross Stagner in 1936, represents one of the earliest empirical instruments designed to operationalize and quantify fascist, autocratic, and hyper-nationalist sociopolitical inclinations within a democratic populace. Constructed during the acute economic and structural upheaval of the Great Depression in the United States, the scale emerged more than a decade before the seminal publication of Theodor W. Adorno and colleagues’ California F-Scale (1950). Comprising 50 dichotomous items administered in a True – False response format, the FAS investigates ideological tendencies across diverse interconnected domains: aggressive nationalism, economic protectionism, militarism, institutional anti-labor sentiment, opposition to democratic egalitarianism, and a preference for centralized strongman governance. Psychometric evaluations of the instrument demonstrate substantial internal consistency for an early psychometric inventory, yielding split-half reliability coefficients ranging between .75 and .87 across varied collegiate and civic cohorts. Factor analytic and item cluster evaluations reveal that rather than reflecting a single monolithic trait, Stagner’s scale taps into a constellation of interrelated socioeconomic and political attitudes mobilized by structural crisis. The FAS remains a foundational artifact in political psychology and psychometrics, elucidating the psychological mechanisms through which economic precarity translates into support for authoritarian and anti-democratic sociopolitical structures.

2. Keywords

Fascist Attitudes Scale, Ross Stagner, authoritarianism, political psychology, psychometrics, Great Depression, anti-labor attitudes, militarism, nationalism, autocratic governance, ideological measurement, attitude scaling

3. Authors

The Fascist Attitudes Scale was designed and validated by Ross Stagner (June 15, 1909 – October 10, 1997). At the time of the instrument’s primary developmental studies in the mid-1930s, Stagner was affiliated with the Department of Psychology at the University of Akron and subsequently conducted extensive research at Dartmouth College, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Wayne State University, where he served as department chair.

Stagner was a landmark figure in 20th-century psychological science, renowned for his contributions to personality theory, industrial-organizational psychology, and the empirical investigation of sociopolitical conflict. In 1936, Stagner co-founded the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), Division 9 of the American Psychological Association (APA), serving as its president in 1964–1965. His early psychometric work was driven by a conviction that psychological methodology must be actively marshaled to diagnose the emergent sociological pathologies threatening democratic systems across Europe and North America during the interwar era.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Fascist Attitudes Scale was to furnish an objective, standardized psychometric mechanism to evaluate the degree to which citizens of a constitutional democracy endorsed ideological propositions functionally equivalent to those underpinning European fascism and Italian corporatism, without explicitly labeling the propositions as “fascist.” During the mid-1930s, mainstream American discourse predominantly conceptualized fascism as an exotic foreign phenomenon confined to Germany, Italy, and Central Europe. Stagner hypothesized that the psychological, economic, and institutional roots of fascist ideology were latent within domestic sociopolitical beliefs, specifically catalyzed by the destabilizing strains of the Great Depression.

From a theoretical rationale, Stagner recognized that measuring political attitudes via transparent ideological labels (e.g., asking respondents directly if they favored “fascism” or “dictatorship”) introduced pervasive social desirability bias and semantic confusion. Instead, the FAS was formulated to measure underlying substantive components of fascist doctrine: virulent anti-communism, the subordination of individual civil liberties to collective national strength, hostility toward organized labor, the glorification of military discipline for unemployed youths, imperialist protection of foreign markets, and skepticism regarding the cognitive capacity of the average voter to engage in self-governance. By embedding these themes within concrete contemporary policy disputes (such as the National Recovery Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps camps, War Debts, and trade with China and the Philippines), Stagner captured authentic ideological stances.

In terms of practical applications, the FAS served as an analytical diagnostic in sociopolitical research, educational assessment, and social attitude monitoring. It provided researchers with an empirical metric to track how institutional allegiances, social class, familial background, and economic hardship correlated with receptivity to autocratic rhetoric. While modern researchers rarely use the 1936 FAS in clinical diagnostics, the scale functions as an indispensable comparative baseline in political psychology, longitudinal historical research, and the historiography of authoritarian measurement.

5. Psychological Construct

The Fascist Attitudes Scale measures a multidimensional sociopolitical construct defined by the psychological convergence of authoritarian statecraft, reactionary socioeconomics, aggressive national self-assertion, and the subjugation of democratic pluralism. Rather than conceptualizing fascism solely as a formal system of state governance, Stagner identified it as a coherent psychological configuration comprising several interrelated sub-dimensions:

Autocratic Governance and Antidemocratic Sentiments

A core dimension of the FAS evaluates an individual’s explicit distrust in democratic institutions, electoral equality, and representative governance. Stagner tapped into the psychological desire for decisive, centralized executive command, as illustrated by Item 7 (“What we need is a strong president who will make people cooperate for recovery”) and Item 38 (“We’d get out of the depression quicker if we had a strong intelligent man with full power to run things”). This sub-dimension reflects political cynicism toward deliberative democracy, viewing universal suffrage as an obstacle to administrative efficiency (e.g., Item 29: “The average person isn’t intelligent enough to vote his way out of the depression”; Item 48: “People should not be allowed to vote unless they are educated and intelligent”).

Hyper-Nationalism, Xenophobia, and Trade Protectionism

Fascist ideology relies heavily on inward-looking, aggressive in-group consolidation coupled with external out-group hostility. The FAS operationalizes this dynamic through items targeting economic nationalism, immigration restriction, and foreign scapegoating. Respondents high on this dimension view national preservation as demanding extreme self-denial and the exclusion of foreign labor (e.g., Item 4: “The U.S. should stop immigration to give American workers more jobs”; Item 45: “If we have unemployment; we should deport the excess workers back to their home countries”; Item 17: “We must all sacrifice a little to build a strong American nation”).

Militarism and Social Regimentation

A distinctive feature of interwar fascist mobilization was the integration of military hierarchy and discipline into civic life, particularly regarding youth socialization and crisis mitigation. Stagner assessed this construct through proposals to militarize social programs and civic relief initiatives (e.g., Item 13: “The unemployed should be given military training so our country could be protected in time of war”; Item 28: “CCC camps where the boys learned military discipline and self-control would be a good idea”). Militarism serves a dual function in this construct: it addresses external threat perceptions while imposing regimentation upon dislocated domestic populations.

Anti-Labor Hostility and Corporatist Industrial Control

In alignment with classic models of fascist political economy, the FAS captures the systematic suppression of autonomous labor activism in favor of enforced industrial harmony and state-sanctioned capital-labor corporatism. Items evaluate antagonism toward collective bargaining and strikes (e.g., Item 3: “Recovery has been delayed by the large number of strikes”; Item 12: “Most labor trouble happens only because of radical agitators”; Item 34: “Labor unions are all right, but we can’t have strikes”). This dimension conceptualizes labor resistance not as a legitimate democratic right, but as an existential disruption engineered by subversives.

Individualized Economic Moralism and Welfare Stigmatization

A psychological pillar of the scale is the belief in a strictly punitive, individualistic attribution of economic hardship. Individuals endorsing this perspective actively delegitimize systemic socioeconomic critique, instead attributing unemployment and poverty to personal character defects, indolence, or malingering (e.g., Item 16: “The people who complain most about the depression wouldn’t take a job if you gave it to them”; Item 21: “Any able-bodied man could get a job right now if he tried hard enough”; Item 43: “Unemployment insurance would saddle us with a nation of idlers”).

6. Theoretical Framework

The formulation of the Fascist Attitudes Scale rests upon the integration of early 20th-century social psychology, socio-structural crisis theory, and emergent dynamic psychology. Stagner developed the scale against the backdrop of European political developments: Benito Mussolini’s consolidation of power in Italy, Adolf Hitler’s rise in Weimar Germany, and the emergence of domestic paramilitary and demagogic movements in the United States, such as Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice and the Silver Legion of America.

Stagner was intellectually guided by the premise that political attitudes do not emerge in an ideological vacuum; rather, they serve vital cognitive and ego-defensive functions for individuals experiencing structural insecurity. Grounded in early attitude measurement theory pioneered by L. L. Thurstone, Stagner posited that attitudes are generalized reaction tendencies that bias behavior toward or against social values, groups, and institutions. When social conditions are stable, democratic procedural norms remain dominant. However, when acute economic disruption shatters institutional trust—such as during the industrial collapse of the 1930s—individuals experience profound cognitive dissonance and personal vulnerability.

Under such pressures, Stagner argued, psychological needs for order, predictability, and social cohesion often override commitments to democratic debate and individual autonomy. This perspective anticipated later formulations of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) developed by Bob Altemeyer and the social dominance orientations outlined by Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto. Stagner recognized that fascist attitudes represent a cohesive psychological defensive posture: complex systemic socioeconomic failures are reduced to simplistic moral narratives (e.g., lazy workers, foreign competitors, radical instigators), while collective anxiety is channeled into aggressive identification with an idealized nation-state and a paternalistic strongman.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Fascist Attitudes Scale was established through a series of empirical investigations conducted between 1934 and 1936 across diverse student cohorts, labor groups, and community samples.

Construct Validity

Construct validity was corroborated by examining the patterns of inter-item correlation and contrasting demographic sub-samples expected to differ theoretically in their sociopolitical outlooks. Stagner (1936) demonstrated that individuals who endorsed antidemocratic political centralization simultaneously endorsed anti-labor propositions and xenophobic economic policies. The convergence of these distinct content areas around an overarching ideological vector confirmed that the scale tapped a coherent construct rather than haphazard, transient opinions.

Criterion and Known-Groups Validity

The scale exhibited robust criterion-related validity when administered to known groups with divergent political commitments. Stagner evaluated students enrolled in business administration, engineering, liberal arts, and labor education programs. In alignment with theoretical expectations:

• Business and commerce students registered significantly higher fascist attitude scores, demonstrating elevated agreement with items prioritizing capital preservation, anti-union measures, and strong executive authority.
• Students affiliated with progressive political clubs, labor organizations, and social science faculties scored substantially lower on the scale, systematically rejecting militaristic CCC camps, anti-strike propositions, and voting restrictions.
• Family socioeconomic background served as a meaningful discriminator: students whose parents occupied high-status managerial or capitalist roles exhibited significantly higher FAS composite scores than students from working-class or union-affiliated households.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

When evaluated against contemporary scales of economic conservatism and social distance (such as early iterations of Thurstone’s attitude scales toward communism, war, and religion), the FAS demonstrated strong positive correlations with economic conservatism ($r \approx .60$ to $.72$) and nationalism, while exhibiting modest or near-zero correlations with non-political intelligence indices. This confirmed that fascist inclinations were not a mere reflection of cognitive deficit or educational attainment, but represented a distinct ideological configuration.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Fascist Attitudes Scale was assessed by Stagner using split-half techniques, item-whole point-biserial correlations, and re-test administrations where feasible given the socio-historical constraints of the 1930s testing environment.

• Internal Consistency (Split-Half Reliability): Stagner (1936) computed split-half reliability coefficients across independent student cohorts at the University of Akron and Dartmouth College. Applying the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula to correct for test length, the corrected split-half reliability coefficients fell consistently within the range of $r_{sb} = .75$ to $r_{sb} = .87$. In a later review of political attitude measures, Robinson and Shaver (1969) affirmed that these values represent robust internal consistency for an early dichotomously scored 50-item instrument.
• Item-Total Correlations: Item analyses revealed that items reflecting strongman rule (Item 7, Item 38), anti-strike measures (Item 3, Item 12, Item 34), and welfare skepticism (Item 16, Item 21, Item 43) exhibited the highest discrimination indices, discriminating effectively between the upper and lower quartiles of overall scale scorers.
• Temporal Stability (Test-Retest): Short-term stability evaluations conducted across intervals of several weeks yielded stability coefficients around $r = .80$, indicating that despite rapid day-to-day shifts in contemporary economic headlines during the mid-Depression years, the underlying latent ideological structure assessed by the FAS remained remarkably stable.

9. Factor Analysis

Modern computerized factor analysis was not technologically available during Stagner’s 1936 initial study; however, Stagner employed systematic cluster analysis, tetrachoric correlation matrices, and item-discrimination indices to identify underlying latent dimensions. Subsequent psychometric reappraisals of Stagner’s item pool (e.g., Robinson & Shaver, 1969) have identified a clear multidimensional factor structure:

Factor 1: Antidemocratic Autocracy and Strongman Leadership

This primary factor accounts for the largest proportion of shared variance among items. Key loading items include Item 38 (“We’d get out of the depression quicker if we had a strong intelligent man with full power to run things”), Item 7 (“What we need is a strong president who will make people cooperate for recovery”), and Item 44 (“America has plenty of plans–what it needs is strong men who are willing to work for recovery”). This factor reflects a psychological capitulation to centralized authority in times of national duress.

Factor 2: Anti-Labor and Industrial Disciplinary Sentiment

A second major latent component binds items targeting organized labor, strikes, and welfare recipients. High-loading statements include Item 12 (“Most labor trouble happens only because of radical agitators”), Item 3 (“Recovery has been delayed by the large number of strikes”), and Item 47 (“The NRA would have worked if so many strikes hadn’t been organized”). This factor measures an orientation toward industrial coercion and corporatist labor subjugation.

Factor 3: Nationalistic Militancy and Social Engineering

Characterized by items promoting military solutions to economic and foreign policy challenges. Core items loading on this factor include Item 13 (“The unemployed should be given military training so our country could be protected in time of war”), Item 28 (“CCC camps where the boys learned military discipline and self-control would be a good idea”), and Item 11 (“Building a bigger navy would give men jobs and protect our foreign markets, so that should be done”).

Factor 4: Xenophobic Protectionism and Isolationist Scapegoating

Represented by items that seek to insulate the domestic economy through deportation, immigration bans, and aggressive foreign trade postures. Exemplary items include Item 4 (“The U.S. should stop immigration to give American workers more jobs”), Item 45 (“If we have unemployment; we should deport the excess workers back to their home countries”), and Item 8 (“If we buy European made goods, we make the depression in this country last longer”).

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Sociopolitical Attitude Inventory / Self-Report Measure of Ideological Orientations.
• Construct Assessed: Endorsement of fascist, autocratic, hyper-nationalist, anti-labor, and antidemocratic sociopolitical propositions.
• Target Population: Adults and collegiate populations; primarily utilized in political science, social psychology, and historical research.
• Format & Administration: Paper-and-pencil or digital self-administered questionnaire. Can be administered individually or in group testing environments.
• Number of Items: 50 items.
• Item Response Format: Dichotomous forced-choice format: True – False.
• Administration Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes.
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Items reflecting pro-fascist, anti-labor, xenophobic, or autocratic propositions (e.g., Items 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50) are keyed in the affirmative (True = 1 point, False = 0 points).
  • Items endorsing progressive, pro-labor, egalitarian, or internationalist stances (e.g., Items 9, 15, 19, 25, 33, 35) are reverse-keyed (False = 1 point, True = 0 points).
  • Neutral, non-discriminating filler items (e.g., Items 1, 2, 5, 26, 31, 32, 36, 41) served in Stagner’s original study to assess contemporary economic theories and general pessimism without loading directly into the primary ideological composite.
  • Total scores yield a continuous metric where higher cumulative scores reflect greater receptivity to fascist, autocratic, and punitive sociopolitical policies.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Fascist Attitudes Scale was originally formulated, validated, and published in 1936 by Dr. Ross Stagner in the Journal of Social Psychology. Due to its publication date prior to 1978 and its historical integration into academic sourcebooks, the instrument has long entered the public domain under United States copyright law.

Researchers, educators, and scholars are free to utilize, reproduce, adapt, and administer the scale for non-commercial academic and historical research without royalty fees or formal institutional licensing permissions. When utilizing the instrument, proper academic attribution to Ross Stagner (1936) and historical psychometric compendiums (e.g., Robinson & Shaver, 1969) is standard professional practice.

12. References

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. Harper & Row.
• Altemeyer, B. (1981). Right-Wing Authoritarianism. University of Manitoba Press.
• Altemeyer, B. (1996). The Authoritarian Specter. Harvard University Press.
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of Political Attitudes. Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan. https://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dis/infoserv/isrpub/pdf/Measuresofsocialpsychologicalattitudes_2928_.PDF
• Stagner, R. (1936). Fascist attitudes: An exploratory study. The Journal of Social Psychology, 7(3), 309–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1936.9919890
• Stagner, R. (1940). Studies of aggressive social attitudes: I. Measurement and interrelations of selected attitudes. The Journal of Social Psychology, 11(2), 255–270. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1940.9921448
• Thurstone, L. L. (1928). Attitudes can be measured. American Journal of Sociology, 33(4), 529–554. https://doi.org/10.1086/214483

13. Items of the Scale