296 Part III: Emigration Years
for the indirect indices. ‘I have distilled a number of questions by means
of a kind of translation from the “Elements of Anti-Semitism”. It was
all a lot of fun.’^108
The study achieved its fame because of this method for measuring
fascist structures of prejudice – the F scale. The method adopted per-
mitted the subjects to make a graduated agreement or disagreement
with a number of assertions. These responses were entered on a scale
that went from +3 to −3. This meant that in the case of authoritarian
statements, for example, the answers could indicate strong, moderate or
slight agreement or disagreement. Each degree on the scale was given
a score, and hence it was possible simply to add up the score achieved
by each respondent. Looking back, Adorno noted:
In Berkeley then we developed the F scale in a free and relaxed
environment deviating considerably from the conception of a
pedantic science that must account for its every step. Probably the
reason for this was what people liked to call ‘the psychoanalytic
background’ of us four directors of the study, particularly our
familiarity with the method of free association.... The conjecture
is hardly too far-fetched that whatever The Authoritarian Per-
sonality exhibits in originality, unconventionality, imagination,
and interest in important themes is due precisely to that freedom.
The element of playfulness that I would like to think is essential
to every intellectual productivity was in no way lacking during
the development of the F scale. We spent hours thinking up whole
dimensions, variables, and syndromes as well as particular ques-
tionnaire items of which we were all the prouder the less apparent
their relation to the main theme was, whereas theoretical reasons
led us to expect correlations with ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism
and reactionary political-economic views.^109Adorno’s own account of the research methods adopted shows the
extent to which he was in fact involved in the practical work. It was
thanks to him that the research group was able to refine the three scales
with which to measure anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism and conservatism
and to develop them to the point where specific items could be used as
reliable indicators of an all-embracing latent personality type. This was
a new way to measure the anti-democratic potential of individuals.
Adorno described the underlying authoritarian personality as ‘a struc-
tural unity’. In other words, ‘traits such as conventionality, authoritarian
submissiveness and aggressiveness, projectivity, manipulativeness, etc.,
regularly go together.’^110 In his subsequent evaluation of the qualitative
interviews, he presented a broad spectrum of concrete examples of
authoritarian and non-authoritarian social characters. He concentrated
on analysing the interview material from the standpoint of ‘ideological
spheres’. In this way he succeeded in opening up a fully differentiated