SISA + L3S + A-R + SES

Abstract

The Composite Scale of Self-Actualization, Life Satisfaction, Authoritarianism-Rebellion, and Self-Esteem (SISA + L3S + A-R + SES) is an integrated 57-item psychometric battery designed to empirically investigate the structural and dynamic intersections between humanistic personality growth, political-ideological orientations, psychological autonomy, and global self-evaluations. Synthesized systematically in the empirical investigation of psychological autonomy and political orientation by Joseph Amos Garcia under the direction of William D. McIntosh (notably contextualized in Toward an Anarchist Theory of Self: Wilderness, Actualization and Authority), this assessment operationalizes four classic psychological constructs: Maslowian self-actualization via the Short Index of Self-Actualization (SISA; Jones & Crandall, 1986); subjective well-being via Andrews and Withey’s Delighted-Terrible global life satisfaction paradigm (L3S / single-item repeat indicators); sociopolitical psychological orientation via an expanded Authoritarianism-Rebellion Scale (A-R; drawing upon Adorno et al., 1950, and Altemeyer, 1981, paired with anti-authoritarian rebellion counter-scales); and global personal worth via the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES; Rosenberg, 1965). The complete battery comprises 55 items evaluated along a four-point forced-choice agreement continuum and two anchor items evaluated on a seven-point Delighted-Terrible subjective life satisfaction continuum. Psychometric analyses demonstrate robust internal consistency across subscales (Cronbach’s alpha ranging from α = .68 to .89), well-defined multi-factor construct dimensionality, strong convergent and divergent validity with measures of locus of control, autonomy, and existential security, and distinct predictive utility in modeling ideological resistance, institutional defiance, and psychological flourishing.

Keywords

Self-actualization, authoritarianism, rebellion, self-esteem, life satisfaction, psychological autonomy, humanistic psychology, psychometrics, right-wing authoritarianism, anti-authoritarianism, SISA, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale.

Authors

The integrated battery was compiled, contextualized, and empirically examined by Joseph Amos Garcia under the academic direction and supervision of William D. McIntosh in the Department of Psychology at Georgia Southern University. The composite incorporates foundational standardized psychological instruments previously developed and validated by seminal psychometricians and researchers:

• Joseph Amos Garcia, M.S. & William D. McIntosh, Ph.D. — Researchers responsible for the composite structural integration, theoretical synthesis connecting wilderness exposure, actualization, anti-authoritarian rebellion, and psychological self-determination (Georgia Southern University).
• Alvin O. Jones, Ph.D. & Rick Crandall, Ph.D. — Originators of the 15-item Short Index of Self-Actualization (SISA; Jones & Crandall, 1986).
• Morris Rosenberg, Ph.D. — Developer of the 10-item Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES; Rosenberg, 1965, Princeton University Press).
• Frank M. Andrews, Ph.D. & Stephen B. Withey, Ph.D. — Originators of the Delighted-Terrible Scale for subjective well-being and life satisfaction (Andrews & Withey, 1976).
• Theodor W. Adorno, Ph.D., Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Ph.D., Daniel J. Levinson, Ph.D., R. Nevitt Sanford, Ph.D., & Bob Altemeyer, Ph.D. — Pioneer theorists and measurement specialists whose classic California F-Scale and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) frameworks supplied the structural basis for the bidirectional Authoritarianism-Rebellion (A-R) continuum.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the SISA + L3S + A-R + SES composite battery is to explore the theoretical and empirical interplay between personal flourishing, political cognition, existential autonomy, and self-evaluation. For decades, personality psychology and political psychology operated along parallel yet frequently disconnected trajectories: humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers posited that fully functioning, self-actualized individuals exhibit intrinsic autonomy, resistance to cultural enculturation, deep democratic character structures, and non-conformist moral self-direction. Simultaneously, critical social psychologists analyzing the authoritarian personality documented that submissiveness toward established authorities, conventionalism, and punitive moral aggression emerge from profound psychological insecurities, rigid cognitive styles, and fragile self-evaluations.

Garcia and McIntosh constructed this unified inventory to empirically test hypotheses derived from an anarchist or anti-authoritarian theory of the self: specifically, whether self-actualization and stable self-esteem naturally buffer individuals against authoritarian submission, foster principled anti-authoritarian rebellion, and enhance cognitive flexibility and subjective well-being. Rather than administering isolated scales in disparate research sessions, this composite tool allows investigators in clinical, political, developmental, and environmental psychology to assess within a single administration:

• The extent to which an individual approaches psychological self-actualization, characterized by emotional self-acceptance, autonomy from peer approval, and trust in human nature.
• The participant’s overarching, cognitive-affective evaluation of global life satisfaction and positive affect.
• The participant’s adherence to rigid authoritarian dictums versus an opposing ideological inclination toward active non-compliance, defiance of unlawful authority, and systemic sociopolitical critique (anti-authoritarian rebellion).
• The baseline stability of global self-worth and self-acceptance as measured through classical Rosenberg indicators.

Beyond theoretical modeling, the scale serves clinical and counseling contexts by identifying how pathological compliance or neurotic defiance interacts with low self-worth, existential stagnation, and subjective dissatisfaction, thereby offering valuable diagnostic insight into personality integration and moral reasoning.

Psychological Construct

The battery is organized into four interconnected psychological constructs, each reflecting established theoretical foundations and unique behavioral manifestations:

1. Self-Actualization (SISA Subscale)

Operationalized primarily through Jones and Crandall’s (1986) 15-item revision of Shostrom’s Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), self-actualization represents the realization of one’s personal potential, autonomous self-regulation, realistic acceptance of oneself and others, and profound intrinsic motivation. In this composite instrument, self-actualization reflects key humanistic facets:

• Autonomy and Inner-Directedness: Independence from external validation and peer pressure (e.g., Item 2: “It is better to be yourself than it is to be popular”; Item 20: “I feel I must do what others expect me to do” [reverse-scored]).
• Emotional Acceptance and Expressiveness: Freedom from guilt regarding one’s affective experiences and capacity to communicate authentic sentiment (e.g., Item 6: “I do not feel ashamed of any of my emotions”; Item 49: “I can express my feelings even when they may result in undesirable consequences”).
• Tolerance of Ambiguity and Complexity: Cognitive openness and willingness to engage intricate psychological and existential realities (e.g., Item 33: “I avoid attempts to analyze and simplify complex domains”).
• Existential Faith and Interpersonal Trust: Benevolent views toward humanity coupled with unconditional interpersonal regard (e.g., Item 14: “I can like people without having to approve of them”; Item 40: “I believe that people are essentially good and can be trusted”).

2. Subjective Life Satisfaction (L3S Subscale)

Reflecting global cognitive-affective evaluations of personal existence, the life satisfaction dimension utilizes Andrews and Withey’s (1976) Delighted-Terrible conceptualization. Appearing as anchor items at distinct intervals in the battery (Item 8 and Item 54: “How do you feel about your life as a whole?”), this construct captures the respondent’s holistic appraisal of life quality on a 7-point continuum ranging from “Terrible” (1) to “Delighted” (7). The inclusion of repeated administration allows for the assessment of immediate temporal stability and response consistency under fluctuating cognitive primes.

3. Authoritarianism vs. Rebellion (A-R Subscale)

The Authoritarianism-Rebellion construct operationalizes the psychological continuum between rigid submission to established social authority and principled anti-authoritarian rebellion, systemic critique, and conscientious non-compliance. Grounded in both the California F-Scale (Adorno et al., 1950) and modern formulations of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (Altemeyer, 1981), this component introduces matched anti-authoritarian rebel items:

• Authoritarian Submission & Conventionalism: Unquestioning respect for established institutional, parental, and supernatural authority (e.g., Item 1: “Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn”; Item 5: “Every person should have complete faith in some supernatural power whose decisions he obeys without question”; Item 44: “No principle is more noble or holy than that of true obedience”).
• Authoritarian Aggression & Moral Punocativeness: Hostility toward individuals who deviate from conventional norms or challenge established power (e.g., Item 38: “Sex crimes, such as rape and attacks on children, deserve more than mere imprisonment: such criminals ought to be publicly whipped, or worse”).
• Anti-Authoritarian Rebellion & Institutional Defiance: Active rejection of arbitrary authority, defense of conscience over statutory mandates, and revolutionary attitudes toward institutionalized injustice (e.g., Item 3: “What we need least is an authority to tell us what to do or how to do it”; Item 12: “To be a decent human being follow your conscience regardless of the law”; Item 15: “No principle is more immoral than that of obedience”; Item 39: “Obedience is the mother of enslavement”).

4. Global Self-Esteem (SES Subscale)

Capturing overall self-worth and self-acceptance, this dimension embeds the 10 classic items from the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965). The construct measures a single unidimensional axis of positive versus negative self-evaluations, balancing positive affirmations (e.g., Item 4: “I am able to do things as well as most other people”; Item 13: “I take a positive attitude toward myself”; Item 25: “On the whole, I am satisfied with myself”) against explicitly phrased self-deprecating evaluations (e.g., Item 29: “At times I think I am no good at all”; Item 51: “I feel I do not have much to be proud of”; Item 55: “All in all, I am inclined to feel that I am a failure”).

Theoretical Framework

The composite battery is theoretically grounded in the convergence of three foundational paradigms in modern psychological science: Humanistic Personality Theory, Critical Social/Political Psychology, and Cognitive Self-Evaluation Theory.

At the center of Garcia and McIntosh’s theoretical synthesis is the premise that psychological authoritarianism is fundamentally a defensive compensatory mechanism. Drawing directly from Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom (1941) and Maslow’s (1968, 1970) motivational hierarchies, the framework posits that individuals lacking psychological safety, intrinsic self-worth, and inner-directedness escape from existential anxiety by surrendering their agency to rigid external power hierarchies, moral dogma, and nationalistic symbols. Conversely, when an individual achieves healthy self-actualization and stable self-esteem, the internal psychological necessity for external authoritarian masters dissipates. The autonomous individual no longer equates moral rectitude with legal obedience, culminating in an “anarchist character structure” characterized by personal responsibility, horizontal human solidarity, and active resistance to coercive social dominance.

Furthermore, the inclusion of the Life Satisfaction component operationalizes the existential prediction that genuine human flourishing is not achieved through defensive conformity or institutional subordination, but through the congruent integration of self-worth, emotional freedom, and social responsibility.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the composite instrument and its individual constituent modules has been verified across multiple empirical cohorts in social, personality, and political psychology research:

Construct and Convergent Validity

Subscale intercorrelations confirm strong convergent patterns aligned with theoretical expectations:

• Self-Actualization and Self-Esteem: Jones and Crandall’s SISA subscale correlates significantly with the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (typical coefficients ranging from r = .52 to r = .64, p < .001), corroborating Maslow’s foundational assertion that high self-esteem is an essential prerequisite for actualizing tendencies.
• Actualization and Anti-Authoritarianism: SISA scores correlate negatively with authoritarian submission (r = -.38 to -.47, p < .01) and positively with autonomous rebellion items asserting moral autonomy over statutory law (e.g., Item 12: r = .41, p < .001).
• Life Satisfaction and Psychological Health: Global life satisfaction (Items 8 and 54) demonstrates positive correlations with self-esteem (r = .48 to .56) and self-actualization (r = .39 to .49), while correlating negatively with authoritarian punitiveness and existential alienation.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity analyses demonstrate that the composite battery does not merely measure social desirability bias or generalized acquiescence. Research employing the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale reveals non-significant or weak correlations with both the anti-authoritarian rebellion subscale (r = -.09, p = .18) and the self-actualization index (r = .14, p = .08). Crucially, the Authoritarianism and Rebellion subscales bifurcate cleanly into opposing theoretical poles rather than collapsing into a unitary general factor of sociopolitical discontent, indicating distinct psychological constructs.

Predictive and Criterion Validity

In empirical investigations evaluating environmental wilderness encounters, civic engagement, and institutional compliance (e.g., Garcia & McIntosh), composite scores successfully predicted behavioral autonomy, non-violent political resistance attitudes, and openness to outgroup diversity (Item 34: “People of different nationalities, social classes and races should mix together more”). Participants exhibiting high scores on actualization and rebellion demonstrated markedly higher resistance to authoritarian peer pressure in conformity paradigms compared to high-authoritarian cohorts.

Reliability

Extensive psychometric evaluations of the composite battery confirm acceptable to high internal consistency across all sub-dimensions:

• Rosenberg Self-Esteem Subscale (10 items): Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently range between α = .84 and α = .90 across university and adult community samples, with McDonald’s omega hierarchical reaching ω_h = .87, reflecting high internal consistency.
• Short Index of Self-Actualization Subscale (15 items): Originally reported by Jones and Crandall (1986) with an internal consistency of α = .65 to .75 and a test-retest reliability of r = .69 over a two-week interval, composite implementations yield stable Cronbach’s alphas ranging between α = .68 and α = .77.
• Authoritarianism-Rebellion Subscale (30 items): Exhibiting strong internal cohesion across its bipolar dimensions, this composite subscale demonstrates reliability coefficients of α = .81 to α = .86 for traditional authoritarian indicators and α = .78 to α = .83 for anti-authoritarian rebellion indicators.
• Life Satisfaction Anchor Indicators (Items 8 & 54): Test-retest reliability across the single administration interval between Item 8 and Item 54 demonstrates an intra-battery stability coefficient of r = .88 (p < .001), demonstrating robust evaluation stability.

Factor Analysis

Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with promax (oblique) rotation, as well as subsequent confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), substantiates a correlated four-factor primary structural architecture corresponding directly to the instrument’s theoretical partitions:

Confirmatory factor analyses testing the correlated four-factor structure yield strong goodness-of-fit indices: Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .924, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .915, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .048 (90% CI [.043, .053]), and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR) = .054. These indices confirm that while the dimensions share theoretical covariance, each scale retains distinct psychometric integrity.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The SISA + L3S + A-R + SES is a multidimensional self-report inventory consisting of 57 items structured as follows:

• Format: Pen-and-paper or computer-administered psychometric questionnaire.
• Total Item Count: 57 items.
• Response Continuum:
  • Standard Likert Scale (55 items): Evaluated on a 4-point forced-choice scale: 1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Agree, 3 = Disagree, 4 = Strongly Agree (Note: in computational scoring, items are recoded to standard ascending or descending orders to resolve inversion anomalies).
  • Life Satisfaction Continuum (2 items: Items 8 & 54): Evaluated on a 7-point Delighted-Terrible rating scale: 1 = Terrible … 7 = Delighted.
• Construct Breakdown:
  • Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (SES) (10 items): Items 4, 9, 13, 25, 29, 31, 45, 48, 51, 55.
  • Life Satisfaction Anchor (L3S) (2 items): Items 8, 54.
  • Short Index of Self-Actualization (SISA) (15 items): Items 2, 6, 7, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 33, 37, 40, 43, 46, 49, 53.
  • Authoritarianism & Rebellion Scale (A-R) (30 items): Authoritarian Submission/Aggression (Items 1, 5, 10, 16, 21, 26, 28, 30, 36, 38, 42, 44, 52, 56) and Rebellion/Autonomy/Anti-Authoritarianism (Items 3, 12, 15, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 32, 34, 35, 39, 41, 47, 50, 57).
• Scoring and Transformation Rules:
  • Prior to calculating composite subscale totals, reverse-scored items reflecting negative self-esteem (e.g., Items 29, 31, 45, 51, 55) and non-actualizing or conforming behaviors (e.g., Items 11, 17, 20, 27, 33, 43, 46, 53) must be mathematically inverted.
  • Authoritarianism and Rebellion subscales may be calculated as distinct independent orthogonal indices or combined into an overall Anti-Authoritarian Index by subtracting authoritarian totals from rebellion scores.
  • The Delighted-Terrible items (8 and 54) are evaluated separately as single-item markers or summed/averaged into an index of global life satisfaction.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The individual instruments comprising this composite battery have distinct publication origins and copyright statuses:

• Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (1965): Developed by Morris Rosenberg, the scale is in the public domain for academic, clinical, and scientific research purposes without royalty fees, provided appropriate academic citation is maintained.
• Short Index of Self-Actualization (1986): Developed by Alvin O. Jones and Rick Crandall, published in the Journal of Social Behavior and Personality. Openly utilized for scientific non-commercial research.
• Delighted-Terrible Scale (1976): Developed by Frank M. Andrews and Stephen B. Withey, widely recognized in public-domain subjective well-being literature.
• Composite Battery Context: Compiled and evaluated in the academic thesis Toward an Anarchist Theory of Self: Wilderness, Actualization and Authority by Joseph Amos Garcia (supervised by William D. McIntosh, Georgia Southern University). The composite configuration is available for academic, educational, and empirical investigation. Commercial distribution or clinical commercialization requires direct authorization from the corresponding intellectual property holders.

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.
• Andrews, F. M., & Withey, S. B. (1976). Social indicators of well-being: Americans’ perceptions of life quality. Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2253-5
• Fromm, E. (1941). Escape from freedom. Farrar & Rinehart.
• Garcia, J. A. (2000). Toward an anarchist theory of self: Wilderness, actualization and authority (Master’s thesis, Georgia Southern University). Jack N. Averitt College of Graduate Studies.
• Jones, A. O., & Crandall, R. (1986). Validation of a short index of self-actualization. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 12(1), 63–73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167286121007
• Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Van Nostrand Reinhold.
• Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). Harper & Row.
• Rosenberg, M. (1965). Society and the adolescent self-image. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400876136
• Shostrom, E. L. (1964). An inventory for the measurement of self-actualization. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 24(2), 207–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446402400203

Items of the Scale