Response Set, Authoritarianism and Personality Questionnaires

A number of questionnaires were administered to 137 neurotic subjects in order to test five hypotheses. It was predicted (1) that personality questionnaires would not show evidence of ‘acquiescence’ response set of the kind found in connection with the F scale, and (2) they would not show evidence of another response set, ‘indecisiveness’, measured by the number of ‘?’ responses endorsed. This new response set was predicted (3) to have high consistency from test to test. It was also predicted (4) that high scores on the ‘content’ of the F scale would correlate positively with ‘acquiescence’ and (5) negatively with ‘indecisiveness’ response set. All five predictions were verified.