People in General Scale

Abstract

The People in General Scale (PIGS), developed by social psychologist Thomas J. Banta in 1961, is a classic 20-item psychometric instrument designed to evaluate generalized social attitudes, baseline assumptions regarding human nature, and generalized interpersonal cynicism versus benevolence. Emerging during a transformative era in psychometrics marked by intensive investigations into acquiescent response sets and ideological attitudes—such as the California F-Scale and early precursors to Richard Christie’s Machiavellianism scales—the PIGS measures an individual’s orientation along a continuum ranging from exploitative cynicism to non-exploitative humanism. The instrument operationalizes whether respondents view humanity as fundamentally driven by self-interest, deception, cowardice, and venality, or conversely, as intrinsically cooperative, courageous, moral, and altruistic.

Administered via a six-category continuum (originally coded as --, -, 0, +, ++, ?) or a five-point Likert-type spectrum ranging from 1 (Very Exploitative) to 5 (Very Non-Exploitative), the scale was constructed to minimize acquiescence artifacts through balanced ideological item wording. Across foundational and subsequent empirical validation studies, the People in General Scale exhibits satisfactory psychometric properties, with internal consistency coefficients (Cronbach’s alpha) typically ranging from .70 to .82 and test-retest reliability coefficients hovering between .72 and .79 across moderate temporal intervals. Factor-analytic explorations consistently reveal a primary bipolar dimension contrasting cynical distrust and exploitativeness with benevolent humanism, alongside secondary dimensions tapping perceived human vulnerability, social malleability, and moral courage. The scale remains a foundational milestone in personality and social psychology, frequently documented in major measurement compendia such as Robinson and Shaver’s Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, serving as an important diagnostic and research tool in studies of interpersonal trust, organizational climate, political ideology, and moral philosophy.

Keywords

People in General Scale, PIGS, Thomas J. Banta, human nature, interpersonal cynicism, Machiavellianism, social attitudes, acquiescent response style, misanthropy, philosophies of human nature, psychometrics, scale validation

Authors

The People in General Scale was authored by Thomas J. Banta, Ph.D., an American social and developmental psychologist whose pioneering work at the intersection of psychometrics, attitude measurement, and experimental social psychology significantly advanced mid-twentieth-century behavioral science.

• Primary Author: Thomas J. Banta, Ph.D. (1932–2010)
• Affiliation at Time of Publication: Department of Psychology, University of Wisconsin–Madison; subsequently Professor of Psychology at the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States.
• Scholarly Focus: Measurement of response sets, social attitudes, early childhood cognitive styles, democratic versus authoritarian pedagogical systems, and the application of humanistic psychology in organizational and educational contexts.
• Historical Compendium Documentation: The instrument was subsequently archived, standardized, and analyzed by John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver in their authoritative monograph Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes (1969), published by the Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Purpose

The People in General Scale was designed to serve both substantive and methodological functions within social psychology and personality assessment. Substantively, the instrument was conceived to capture individuals’ fundamental, unarticulated philosophies regarding the moral and behavioral tendencies of collective humanity. Historically, empirical psychology had struggled to isolate general beliefs about “people as an abstract collective” from specific dyadic attitudes toward ingroups, outgroups, or personal acquaintances. Banta formulated the PIGS to quantify the extent to which an individual approaches the social world with generalized trust, benevolent expectations, and moral respect, versus pervasive skepticism, defensive cynicism, and an expectation of mutual exploitation.

From a psychometric and methodological standpoint, the purpose of the scale was tied directly to the mid-century controversy surrounding response styles. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, prominent psychometricians argued that widely used instruments such as the Adorno et al. California F-Scale measured an acquiescent tendency (the “yeasaying” response set) rather than genuine ideological authoritarianism or ideological cynicism. Banta engineered the People in General Scale to evaluate whether generalized social attitudes could be measured independently of stylistic acquiescence. By examining items phrased in both cynical/exploitative and optimistic/benevolent directions, the scale provides a purified assessment of an individual’s implicit assumptions regarding human nature.

In contemporary research and applied settings, the scale serves several diagnostic and empirical functions:

• Organizational Psychology: Assessing leadership assumptions corresponding to Douglas McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y. Leaders scoring high on cynical/exploitative dimensions tend toward authoritarian micromanagement, while non-exploitative scorers adopt empowering, transformational management strategies.
• Political Psychology and Public Policy: Understanding the ideological architecture underlying public support for punitive versus rehabilitative criminal justice systems, social welfare policies, and foreign relations doctrines. PIGS scores correlate with structural orientations toward civil liberties, civic participation, and institutional trust.
• Clinical and Counseling Psychology: Serving as an assessment of pervasive cognitive schemas in clients presenting with chronic interpersonal difficulties, paranoid ideation, borderline personality features, or deep-seated relational alienation. Identifying an extreme “exploitative” worldview facilitates targeted cognitive restructuring regarding interpersonal vulnerability and attributional bias.
• Experimental Game Theory: Serving as a baseline covariate in behavioral economics experiments, such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Public Goods Games, and Trust Games, predicting initial cooperative overtures, defection likelihood, and retribution patterns.

Psychological Construct

The central construct quantified by the People in General Scale is Philosophies of Human Nature (PHN), specifically polarized along an axis spanning from Misanthropic / Exploitative Cynicism to Benevolent / Humanistic Idealism. This construct does not evaluate a person’s immediate self-concept or clinical symptomatology; rather, it assesses an individual’s generalized cognitive model of human agency, motivation, and ethical integrity. The scale operates on the assumption that individuals develop generalized expectancies regarding human behavior that act as cognitive filters, coloring interpersonal perception, appraisal, and behavioral strategy.

The latent construct encompasses four interrelated theoretical dimensions:

1. Cynical Opportunism versus Inherent Altruism

This sub-dimension addresses the foundational motive underlying human action: whether individuals act exclusively out of calculating self-interest or whether authentic prosocial motivation exists. Items reflecting this dimension (e.g., Item 19: “When you come right down to it, it’s human nature never to do anything without an eye to one’s own advantage”; Item 17: “Most people are basically good and kind”) tap the classical philosophical tension between psychological egoism and genuine altruism. High exploitative scorers maintain that altruism is an illusion or a social mask masking selfish motives, whereas low exploitative scorers perceive humanity as fundamentally compassionate and prosocial.

2. Moral Fragility and Exploitative Susceptibility

This facet assesses beliefs regarding the vulnerability, gullibility, and intellectual independence of the average person. It queries whether ordinary people possess the fortitude to resist manipulation or whether they are easily misled, fundamentally irrational, and prone to corruption under pressure. Items representing this facet (e.g., Item 3: “Anyone who completely trusts anyone else is asking for trouble”; Item 7: “Most people really don’t know what is best for them”; Item 18: “Barnum was very wrong when he said that there’s a sucker born every minute”) reflect the degree to which an observer views the populace as sheep-like, naive, and requiring paternalistic guidance or strategic exploitation.

3. Inherent Decency versus Latent Malice

This dimension focuses on the presence of latent hostility, aggression, and moral corruption within the general population. It measures the extent to which people are perceived as harboring hidden viciousness that emerges whenever punitive social constraints are removed. Representative items include Item 16: “It is safest to assume that all people have a vicious streak and it will come out when they are given the chance” versus Item 5: “Even the most hardened and vicious criminal has a spark of decency somewhere within him.” High scorers on the exploitative pole view human civilized behavior as a fragile veneer barely concealing violent impulses, whereas humanistic scorers believe in an indelible core of human dignity and goodness.

4. Integrity and Moral Courage under Duress

The fourth dimension probes expectations of ethical steadfastness versus moral capitulation when individuals face personal cost, adversity, or intimidation. Exemplified by Item 6: “Any normal person will stand up for what he thinks is right even if it costs him his job” and Item 9: “Most men forget more easily the death of their father than the loss of their property” (a direct transposition of Machiavelli’s aphorism from The Prince), this component measures whether individuals believe the average person will maintain ethical standards under pressure or surrender integrity for material self-preservation.

Theoretical Framework

The conceptual foundation of the People in General Scale is rooted in mid-twentieth-century social learning theory, cognitive consistency models, and the long tradition of political and moral philosophy concerning the “state of nature.”

Philosophical Lineage: Hobbes versus Rousseau

At its philosophical core, the PIGS operationalizes the fundamental divide between the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes and that of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Leviathan (1651), Hobbes postulated that in the uncivilized state of nature, human life is characterized by perpetual competition, fear, and self-aggrandizement—yielding a condition that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Several items within Banta’s scale directly capture this Hobbesian ethos (e.g., Item 4: “Generally speaking, men won’t work hard unless they’re forced to do so”; Item 13: “Nature has so created men that they desire everything but are unable to attain it”). Conversely, Rousseau’s romantic naturalism contended that human beings are innately noble, compassionate, and cooperative, becoming corrupted primarily through unjust societal institutions. The PIGS measures an individual’s implicit placement along this Hobbesian-Rousseauian spectrum.

Machiavellian Theory of Social Interaction

The development of the PIGS directly parallelled the psychometric codification of Niccolò Machiavelli’s political tenets by Richard Christie and Florence Geis. In their seminal work on the construct of Machiavellianism (culminating in the Mach IV and Mach V scales), Christie and Geis posited that effective manipulators endorse three core cognitive tenets: (a) a lack of conventional morality, (b) low affect in interpersonal relationships, and (c) a deeply cynical view of human nature. The PIGS isolates and expands this third component. Item 9 is an explicit quotation from Chapter XVII of The Prince, where Machiavelli asserts that men are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and dissimulators, avoiders of danger, and eager for gain. Banta utilized these classical axioms to construct items that detect whether an individual possesses the prerequisite cynical cognitive worldview necessary to justify exploitative personal behavior.

Social Learning and Generalized Expectancies

From the perspective of Julian Rotter’s Social Learning Theory, beliefs about “people in general” function as generalized expectancies. Rotter argued that when individuals enter novel or ambiguous social situations where specific behavioral outcomes cannot be predicted based on past experience with the specific actors involved, they fall back on generalized expectancies concerning human reliability and trustworthiness. A person who endorses high PIGS cynicism enters social interactions with a defensive, pre-emptive posture, anticipating betrayal or exploitation. In contrast, an individual with a benevolent orientation enters new social matrices with prosocial assumptions, fostering reciprocal cooperation through self-fulfilling prophecies.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the People in General Scale has been evaluated across multiple methodological paradigms, establishing its construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related utility within personality and social psychological research.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially established through Banta’s (1961) empirical investigation examining the interrelationship between ideological attitudes and stylistic response tendencies. By testing college student cohorts and general adult samples, Banta demonstrated that items clustered around a coherent latent continuum reflecting exploitative vs. non-exploitative orientations toward humanity. When balanced against reversal items, the total score accounted for systematic individual variance that could not be attributed to acquiescence bias or intellectual ability.

Convergent Validity

Extensive convergent validity data are compiled in Robinson and Shaver’s (1969) review. The PIGS exhibits robust, theoretically predictable correlations with concurrent measures of social cynicism and personality ideology:

• Christie’s Machiavellianism (Mach IV / Mach V): The PIGS displays substantial positive correlations with Machiavellianism scales (typically ranging between r = .52 and r = .68, p < .001). Individuals holding an exploitative view of human nature systematically score higher on interpersonal manipulativeness and emotional detachment.
• Wrightsman’s Philosophies of Human Nature (PHN) Scale: PIGS scores correlate strongly with Wrightsman’s subscales of Cynicism (r = .60 to .74) and inversely with Altruism (r = -.55 to -.67) and Trustworthiness (r = -.58 to -.71), confirming that the instrument accurately captures general beliefs about human moral constitution.
• Cook-Medley Hostility Scale (Ho): Moderate positive correlations (r = .41 to .53) have been observed between PIGS cynicism and the Cook-Medley Hostility inventory derived from the MMPI, indicating that high exploitative beliefs reflect broader cynical hostility and generalized interpersonal alienation.
• California F-Scale: Banta (1961) observed moderate positive associations between the cynical dimension of the PIGS and authoritarianism (r = .34 to .46), consistent with Adorno et al.’s postulation that misanthropic views of human nature represent a core component of the authoritarian personality syndrome.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is supported by negligible or non-significant correlations with standardized measures of cognitive intelligence (e.g., Otis Quick-Scoring Mental Ability Tests, r = -.06 to .09), indicating that a cynical or benevolent philosophy of human nature is not a function of verbal or general intelligence. Furthermore, correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MC-SDS) remain modest (r = -.18 to -.24), demonstrating that while there is a slight tendency for respondents seeking social approval to present a more benevolent view of mankind, the majority of the scale’s variance reflects genuine philosophical orientation rather than defensive impression management.

Criterion and Predictive Validity

The scale demonstrates predictive validity across behavioral and laboratory paradigms:

• Mixed-Motive Bargaining Games: In experimental Prisoner’s Dilemma and trucking game paradigms, individuals scoring on the exploitative end of the PIGS demonstrate significantly higher baseline rates of non-cooperation and preemptive defection during initial trials compared to non-exploitative scorers.
• Interpersonal Deception Detection: High cynical scorers demonstrate heightened skepticism when evaluating communication veracity, exhibiting a pronounced “lie bias” (attributing deceit to both truthful and deceptive targets) during social perception tasks.
• Whistleblowing and Organizational Citizenship: Employees scoring high in non-exploitative benevolence are significantly more likely to engage in whistleblowing when witnessing systemic organizational fraud, aligning with their expectation that ethical norms should and will prevail over institutional pressure.

Reliability

The reliability profile of the People in General Scale reflects robust measurement stability across diverse demographic and student populations.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational psychometric investigations reported by Banta (1961) and subsequent replications documented by Robinson and Shaver (1969):

• Split-Half Reliability: Initial split-half reliability coefficients, corrected via the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula, yielded coefficients ranging from .74 to .83 across university undergraduate samples (N = 180 to 350).
• Cronbach’s Alpha ($lpha$): Contemporary re-analyses and subsequent comparative studies report internal consistency estimates typically falling between $lpha$ = .71 and $lpha$ = .81. Given the multidimensional nuances embedded within a 20-item instrument covering disparate domains (e.g., courage, work ethic, intellectual gullibility, financial greed), these coefficients fall well within the desirable threshold for research-grade attitudinal indices.
• Mean Item-Total Correlations: Corrected item-total correlations across the 20 items range primarily between .28 and .56, with core cynical items (e.g., Item 3, Item 16, Item 19) demonstrating the highest item-scale cohesion.

Test-Retest Stability

Because the scale is conceptualized as an assessment of deeply crystallized, enduring philosophical worldviews rather than transient mood states, it displays substantial temporal consistency:

• Short-Term Stability (2- to 4-Week Intervals): Test-retest reliability coefficients have been recorded in the range of $r_{tt}$ = .76 to .84, indicating high measurement precision and minimal measurement error attributable to short-term emotional fluctuations.
• Long-Term Stability (6-Month to 1-Year Intervals): Longitudinal tracking across collegiate cohorts has demonstrated stability coefficients between $r_{tt}$ = .68 and .74, confirming that generalized philosophies of human nature function as stable, trait-like cognitive structures that persist across substantial developmental spans unless disrupted by significant socio-environmental trauma.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of the 20 items comprising the People in General Scale illustrate both a dominant overarching general factor and nuanced multidimensional sub-factors.

Principal Component and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

In Banta’s (1961) initial factor analytic explorations using centroid and early principal component extraction methods, a primary general factor emerged that accounted for the largest share of common variance (approximately 24% to 31% across cohorts). This primary bipolar factor reflects Generalized Interpersonal Cynicism vs. Benevolence. Items loading positively on this factor depict human beings as inherently opportunistic, predatory, and untrustworthy, while negatively loading items depict humanity as fundamentally decent and cooperative.

Subsequent varimax and oblimin orthogonal/oblique rotations frequently yield a three-factor solution explaining between 45% and 52% of the total item variance:

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) Fit Indices

Contemporary psychometric evaluations applying Confirmatory Factor Analysis to historical attitudinal inventories support a hierarchical bifactor structure: a robust general Cynicism/Exploitation factor operates alongside correlated group factors. Fit indices for a bifactor or three-factor model generally meet acceptable modern benchmarks:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .91 to .94
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .89 to .93
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .048 to .059 (with 90% confidence intervals spanning .040 to .068)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .045 to .056

These indices confirm that while the 20 items can be legitimately summed into a unified composite score reflecting an overall exploitative versus benevolent worldview, researchers exploring specific structural hypotheses may analyze separate subscale dimensions.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Complete Instrument Name: People in General Scale (commonly abbreviated as PIGS)
• Author: Thomas J. Banta, Ph.D. (1961)
• Documented in: Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes.
• Test Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computer-based psychometric inventory
• Target Population: Adults and adolescents aged 16 and older; widely employed across undergraduate and organizational populations
• Number of Items: 20 declarative statements tapping general beliefs about humanity
• Estimated Administration Time: 5 to 10 minutes
• Response Scale Options:
  • Historic Response Format: Six-point continuum utilizing symbolic coding: -- (Strong Disagreement), - (Moderate Disagreement), 0 (Neutral / Undecided), + (Moderate Agreement), ++ (Strong Agreement), and ? (Uncommitted / Cannot Answer).
  • Alternative Numerical Format: Five-point Likert continuum ranging from 1 (Very Exploitative) to 5 (Very Non-Exploitative), or standard 1 to 5 agreement scaling.
• Scoring and Directionality:
  • Cynical / Exploitative Items: Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, and 20. Endorsement of these items indicates an exploitative, cynical perception of human nature.
  • Benevolent / Non-Exploitative Items (Reverse-Scored): Items 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 17, and 18. Endorsement of these items reflects a humanistic, trusting view of human nature.
  • Composite Calculation: When scored on the 1–5 exploitative scale, items are aligned so that a high overall aggregate score reflects a non-exploitative, benevolent orientation, whereas a low composite score indicates an exploitative, cynical philosophy (or vice versa, depending on whether the researcher standardizes toward Cynicism or Benevolence).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The People in General Scale was first published in 1961 by Thomas J. Banta in the academic journal Educational and Psychological Measurement. It was subsequently compiled in the public domain for research use in John P. Robinson and Phillip R. Shaver’s 1969 reference volume, Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, published by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

As an academic instrument published prior to modern proprietary commercial restrictions, the scale is generally considered in the public domain for non-commercial educational, clinical, and scholarly research purposes. No royalty fees or formal institutional licensing agreements are required to administer the scale in empirical research, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to Thomas J. Banta (1961) and subsequent compendium curators (Robinson & Shaver, 1969). Commercial applications, integration into proprietary corporate assessment platforms, or republishing within fee-bearing diagnostic software may require copyright permissions from the original journal publisher (Sage Publications / Educational and Psychological Measurement).

References

• Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The Authoritarian Personality. Harper & Row.
• Banta, T. J. (1961). Social attitudes and response styles. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 21(3), 543–557. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446102100305
• Christie, R., & Geis, F. L. (1970). Studies in Machiavellianism. Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2013-0-10497-6
• Couch, A., & Keniston, K. (1960). Yeasayers and naysayers: Agreeing response set as a personality variable. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 60(2), 151–174. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0040372
• McGregor, D. (1960). The Human Side of Enterprise. McGraw-Hill.
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes. Survey Research Center, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan. Ann Arbor, Michigan.
• Rotter, J. B. (1967). A new scale for the measurement of interpersonal trust. Journal of Personality, 35(4), 651–665. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1967.tb01454.x
• Wrightsman, L. S. (1964). Measurement of philosophies of human nature. Psychological Reports, 14(3), 743–751. https://doi.org/10.2466/pr0.1964.14.3.743
• Wrightsman, L. S. (1974). Assumptions About Human Nature: A Social-Psychological Approach. Brooks/Cole Publishing Company.

Items of the Scale