New Left Scale

Abstract

The New Left Scale (NLS) was developed in the late 1960s by social psychologists Richard Christie, Lucy N. Friedman, and Arthur Ross at Columbia University. Designed during an era of significant socio-political upheaval, student activism, and anti-war demonstrations, the instrument operationalizes the multi-faceted ideological framework of the “New Left” movement, differentiating it from traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrines (“Old Left”) and conventional American liberalism. Composed of 61 items scored on a 7-point Likert response scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), the scale quantifies individual endorsement of radical political, social, and cultural attitudes. Psychometric evaluations demonstrate strong internal consistency (Cronbach’s α typically exceeding .85 across activist and collegiate cohorts) and robust construct validity, evidenced by substantial correlations with participation in civil disobedience, anti-war protests, and institutional disruption. Factor-analytic explorations reveal primary dimensions encompassing the delegitimization of “The Establishment,” advocacy of direct action and revolutionary confrontation, radical personal and sexual autonomy, rejection of bureaucratic hierarchies, and cynicism toward institutional reform. Documented comprehensively in Institute for Social Research compendia, the New Left Scale remains a landmark psychometric assessment for investigating radicalism, institutional alienation, and political social psychology.

Keywords

New Left Scale, political ideology, student activism, radicalism, institutional alienation, participatory democracy, social psychology, psychometrics, political attitudes, Richard Christie

Authors

The New Left Scale was constructed and psychometrically evaluated by a research team at the Department of Social Psychology, Columbia University:

• Richard Christie, Ph.D. — Professor of Social Psychology at Columbia University. Renowned internationally for his foundational work on interpersonal manipulation and the construction of the Machiavellianism scales (Mach-IV and Mach-V), Christie brought rigorous quantitative psychometric methodology to the study of social ideology, authoritarianism, and student protest dynamics.
• Lucy N. Friedman, Ph.D. — Research psychologist affiliated with the Department of Social Psychology at Columbia University during the late 1960s, contributing extensively to data collection, factor analysis, and ideological taxonomy during the 1968 Columbia campus strikes.
• Arthur Ross, Ph.D. — Co-investigator and social researcher at Columbia University, collaborating on the conceptualization of New Left ideology, item generation, and behavioral validation against campus activist involvement.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the New Left Scale is to provide a standardized, psychometrically sound instrument capable of measuring an individual’s affinity for the ideology and tactical doctrines of the New Left movement. Originating during the height of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, and the turbulent 1968 student demonstrations at Columbia University, social scientists faced an empirical challenge: existing instruments measuring political ideology—such as the California F-Scale (Adorno et al., 1950), conservatism scales, or orthodox socialist inventories—were poorly suited to capture the novel socio-political worldview of contemporary student radicals.

Unlike the “Old Left,” which prioritized state-centered socialism, strict ideological discipline, labor union hegemony, and party loyalty, the New Left emphasized decentralized participatory democracy, personal authenticity, cultural liberation, anti-authoritarianism, and deep alienation from technocratic bureaucracy. Consequently, researchers needed an empirical assessment tool to achieve several clinical, sociological, and psychological objectives:

• Distinguishing Radicalism from Conventional Liberalism: The scale differentiates between liberal reformers (who believe existing institutional channels can resolve social inequities) and radicals (who view contemporary institutions as inherently oppressive and requiring dismantling or total restructuring).
• Predicting Political Activism: Researchers utilized the instrument to predict who would engage in nonviolent sit-ins, strikes, institutional disruption, or confrontation with law enforcement versus those who favored normative electoral participation.
• Investigating Ideological Personality Dynamics: When paired with instruments measuring Machiavellianism, dogmatism, or anomie, the scale enabled psychological researchers to evaluate whether left-wing radicalism was driven by personality characteristics, moral convictions, or structural-societal alienation.
• Tracking Longitudinal Ideological Shift: The scale provided developmental and social psychologists with an objective metric to track attitude polarization, maturation, and cohort shifts among university students across their academic careers.

Psychological Construct

The psychological construct measured by the New Left Scale is multidimensional radical political ideology, grounded in subjective alienation from corporate liberalism, representative democracy, and bourgeois social norms. This psychological orientation represents a cohesive belief system integrating political, sociological, and personal values:

1. System Illegitimacy and Anti-Establishment Alienation

Central to the New Left construct is the cognitive appraisal that contemporary American society and its overarching “Establishment” are fundamentally illegitimate, repressive, and incapable of authentic self-determination. Rather than viewing societal flaws as peripheral malfunctions, high scorers perceive alienation as an inevitable structural consequence of the societal framework (e.g., Item 1: “The Establishment” unfairly controls every aspect of our lives…; Item 9: The structure of our society is such that self-alienation is inevitable). This dimension reflects deep systemic distrust toward corporate, governmental, and academic institutions.

2. Rejection of Gradual Reformism and Acceptance of Disruption

This dimension contrasts conventional democratic reform with direct confrontational tactics. It captures a cognitive commitment to direct political action, civil disobedience, and tactical disruption over institutionalized procedures such as electoral voting, legislative compromise, or judicial litigation (e.g., Item 7: Disruption is preferable to dialogue for changing our society; Item 22: There are legitimate channels for reform which must be exhausted before attempting disruption [reverse-coded]). High-scoring individuals dismiss gradualism as an ideological mechanism that pacifies genuine revolutionary transformation.

3. Participatory Democracy vs. Hierarchical Authority

Reflecting the philosophical principles articulated in documents like the Port Huron Statement, the construct incorporates a vision of radical participatory democracy. It systematically repudiates top-down leadership structures, bureaucratic centralization, and formal institutional hierarchies, positing that decision-making should be decentralized, egalitarian, and spontaneous (e.g., Item 28: Real participatory democracy should be the basis for a new society; Item 30: Groups with a formal structure tend to stifle creativity among their members).

4. Cultural Liberation, Existential Authenticity, and Moralism

Departing sharply from orthodox economic determinism, the New Left psychological orientation extends radicalism into interpersonal, psychological, and domestic spheres. It asserts that personal relationships, sexual behavior, and psychological well-being are intrinsically political (e.g., Item 10: Sexual behavior should be bound by mutual feelings, not by formal and legal ties; Item 19: Marriage unfairly restricts one’s personal freedom). The construct views established traditions and conventional social roles as mechanisms of psychological repression that stifle innate human goodness.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual architecture of the New Left Scale is situated at the intersection of critical sociology, existential neo-Marxism, and political social psychology. Three major theoretical currents underpin the instrument:

Critical Theory and the Concept of Repressive Tolerance

The scale reflects the theoretical propositions of Frankfurt School theorists, most notably Herbert Marcuse. In works such as One-Dimensional Man (1964) and Repressive Tolerance (1965), Marcuse argued that advanced industrial societies integrate and neutralize dissent by offering superficial democratic liberties and consumer comforts, which conceal deep-seated economic and psychological enslavement. Several items within the NLS operationalize Marcusean concepts: democratic tolerance and electoral compromises are viewed not as milestones of progress, but as illusions that reinforce systemic oppression (Item 39: Extensive reform in society only serves to perpetuate the evils; it will never solve problems).

C. Wright Mills and the Critique of Technocratic Bureaucracy

Sociologist C. Wright Mills deeply influenced the New Left by identifying the concentration of unaccountable power within military, political, and corporate elites (The Power Elite, 1956). Mills also popularized the phrase “New Left” in his 1960 “Letter to the New Left,” imploring intellectuals to replace the traditional working class with radical students and young intellectuals as the primary historical agency of social change. The NLS captures this theoretical stance through items asserting the political obligations of academic researchers and intellectuals (Item 31: A social scientist should not separate his political responsibilities from his professional role).

Social Psychological Theories of Alienation and Protest

Psychologically, the scale draws upon theories of alienation developed by Melvin Seeman (1959), specifically the dimensions of powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, and value isolation. Rather than framing alienation as individual pathology, the theoretical framework of the NLS posits alienation as a rational, conscious appraisal of an irrational social system. The scale operationalizes anomie and systemic rejection not as passive withdrawal, but as active ideological radicalization.

Validity

Empirical validation of the New Left Scale was conducted across several empirical studies during the late 1960s and early 1970s, primarily utilizing student samples from Columbia University, New York University, and Midwestern universities.

Construct and Known-Groups Validity

Construct validity was demonstrated using known-groups comparisons during the Columbia University campus crisis of 1968. Christie, Friedman, and Ross administered the inventory to students categorized by their behavioral participation during the building seizures and student strikes:

• Active Building Occupiers: Students affiliated with Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Afro-American Society who occupied university buildings scored significantly higher on the overall NLS ($M = 5.34$, $SD = 0.52$) than uninvolved or moderate peers.
• Moderate / Non-Protesting Students: Students who attended classes or favored administrative mediation scored in the mid-range ($M = 3.82$, $SD = 0.61$).
• Conservative Counter-Protesters: Members of conservative student groups and the “Majority Coalition” who opposed the strike scored lowest ($M = 2.45$, $SD = 0.58$).

One-way analyses of variance confirmed statistically significant group differences ($p < .001$), supporting the scale’s ability to discriminate distinct ideological cohorts.

Convergent Validity

The NLS showed strong convergent correlations with allied psychometric measures. Significant positive correlations were observed with:

• Self-identified Left-Right political placement ($r = .72$ to $.78, p < .001$)
• Attitudes toward the Vietnam War (anti-war sentiment: $r = .65, p < .001$)
• Civil Rights militancy and direct-action support ($r = .61, p < .001$)
• Anomie and institutional alienation scales ($r = .48, p < .01$)

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was verified through low or non-significant correlations with general intelligence, cognitive ability, and social desirability scales. Furthermore, Christie et al. reported that the NLS maintained only weak to moderate correlations with the Machiavellianism (Mach-IV) scale ($r = .18$ to $.24$), demonstrating that ideological commitment to radical change was conceptually distinct from interpersonal cynicism, manipulative disposition, or Machiavellian opportunism.

Reliability

The New Left Scale demonstrates robust psychometric reliability across independent empirical administrations:

Internal Consistency

Across the complete 61-item version, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients have consistently ranged between .87 and .93 in student and community samples. Split-half reliability, corrected using the Spearman-Brown formula, yielded coefficients ranging from .85 to .91. Corrected item-total correlations for the majority of items exceed .35, with core tactical and systemic delegitimation statements (e.g., Items 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 39) exhibiting item-total correlations above .55.

Test-Retest Reliability

Short-term test-retest reliability evaluated across a 4-week interval among non-activist collegiate samples demonstrated high temporal stability ($r_{tt} = .84, p < .001$). Over longer intervals (e.g., six months to one year during active political crises), test-retest correlations exhibited moderate attenuation ($r_{tt} = .68$ to $.73$), reflecting meaningful ideological shifts in response to external political events such as draft calls, political assassinations, and escalating military activity.

Factor Analysis

In the original psychometric investigations by Christie, Friedman, and Ross (1969), as well as subsequent analyses cataloged by Robinson and Shaver (1969), the 61 items were subjected to exploratory factor analysis (principal components analysis with varimax rotation). Although a dominant general factor of radical political ideology accounted for approximately 25% to 30% of the common variance, multi-factor solutions revealed several distinct, meaningful sub-dimensions:

Factor 1: Direct Action and Tactical Confrontation

This factor accounts for the largest proportion of specific variance and captures an endorsement of confrontation, disruption, and the delegitimization of authorities through provocation:

• Item 5: Authorities must be put in an intolerable position so they will be forced to respond with repression… (Loading = .68)
• Item 7: Disruption is preferable to dialogue for changing our society. (Loading = .65)
• Item 6: The solutions for contemporary problems lie in striking at their roots, no matter how much destruction might occur. (Loading = .61)
• Item 15: The processes of rebuilding society are of less immediate importance than the processes of destroying it. (Loading = .58)

Factor 2: System Invalidation and Institutional Cynicism

This factor assesses cognitive conviction that contemporary American institutions are irredeemably corrupt, oppressive, and structurally incapable of granting genuine freedom:

• Item 1: “The Establishment” unfairly controls every aspect of our lives… (Loading = .71)
• Item 2: You can never achieve freedom within the framework of contemporary American society. (Loading = .69)
• Item 3: The United States needs a complete restructuring of its basic institutions. (Loading = .64)
• Item 39: Extensive reform in society only serves to perpetuate the evils; it will never solve problems. (Loading = .57)

Factor 3: Defense of Traditional Institutions and Order (Reverse-Scored)

This factor clusters items that support conventional social norms, legal stability, free enterprise, and institutional channels of reform:

• Item 20: The right to private property is sacred. (Loading = -.62)
• Item 22: There are legitimate channels for reform which must be exhausted before attempting disruption. (Loading = -.59)
• Item 25: Society needs some legally based authority in order to prevent chaos. (Loading = -.58)
• Item 34: Traditions serve a useful social function by providing stability and continuity. (Loading = -.54)

Factor 4: Anti-Bureaucratic Spontaneity and Participatory Democracy

This factor reflects commitment to authentic self-expression, decentralization, personal autonomy, and opposition to formal administrative rigidity:

• Item 12: The bureaucracy of American society makes it impossible to live and work spontaneously. (Loading = .54)
• Item 28: Real participatory democracy should be the basis for a new society. (Loading = .51)
• Item 30: Groups with a formal structure tend to stifle creativity among their members. (Loading = .48)

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The administrative characteristics, structural parameters, and scoring protocols for the New Left Scale are detailed below:

• Test Type: Self-report psychometric rating scale; political and social attitude inventory.
• Format: Pen-and-paper or digital questionnaire; suitable for individual administration or large-group survey research.
• Number of Items: 61 statements.
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Strongly disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Mildly disagree
  • 4 = Neutral / Undecided
  • 5 = Mildly agree
  • 6 = Agree
  • 7 = Strongly agree
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Items reflecting New Left attitudes are scored directly: 1 = 1 to 7 = 7.
  • Reverse-coded items reflecting traditionalism, faith in reform, or support for authority (e.g., Items 13, 18, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 33, 34, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 49, 53, 54, 55, 59) are reverse-scored: $Score_{rev} = 8 – Score_{raw}$ (where 1 becomes 7, 2 becomes 6, etc.).
  • A composite score is calculated either by summing all 61 recoded responses (yielding a theoretical range of 61 to 427) or by computing the overall mean item score (ranging from 1.0 to 7.0).
  • Higher composite scores denote greater identification with New Left radicalism, tactical confrontation, and systemic alienation; lower scores indicate political conservatism, traditionalism, or commitment to moderate institutional reform.
• Estimated Completion Time: Approximately 15 to 25 minutes.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The New Left Scale was constructed in 1969 by Richard Christie, Lucy N. Friedman, and Arthur Ross at Columbia University. Initial empirical findings were presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association (APA, 1969) and cataloged in the public domain for academic researchers through the Institute for Social Research (ISR) at the University of Michigan in John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver’s classic reference work, Measures of Political Attitudes (1969).

As an academic research scale published in historical scholarly compendia, the instrument carries no commercial fee and is accessible for non-profit scholarly research, historical analysis, and educational purposes. Researchers utilizing the scale are expected to cite the original developers (Christie et al., 1969) and the reference documentation in Robinson and Shaver (1969).

References

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. Harper & Row.
• Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2013-0-10656-1
• Christie, R., Friedman, L. N., & Ross, A. (1969). The New Left and its ideology: An exploratory study. Proceedings of the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, 4(Pt. 1), 293–294. https://doi.org/10.1037/e646272012-001
• Christie, R., Friedman, L., & Ross, A. (1969). The New Left and its ideology (Unpublished manuscript). Department of Social Psychology, Columbia University.
• Marcuse, H. (1964). One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. Beacon Press.
• Marcuse, H. (1965). Repressive tolerance. In R. P. Wolff, B. Moore Jr., & H. Marcuse (Eds.), A Critique of Pure Tolerance (pp. 95–137). Beacon Press.
• Mills, C. W. (1956). The Power Elite. Oxford University Press.
• Mills, C. W. (1960). Letter to the New Left. New Left Review, 5(1), 18–23.
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of Political Attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. ISR Publication Link
• Seeman, M. (1959). On the meaning of alienation. American Sociological Review, 24(6), 783–791. https://doi.org/10.2307/2088565

Items of the Scale