Social attitudes and beliefs are relatively stable evaluations, assumptions, and expectations about society, social order, groups, authority, justice, money, environment, and shared public life. They shape how people interpret social reality, justify or question social arrangements, and position themselves in relation to other people and institutions.
Unlike personality traits, social attitudes are directed toward specific social objects: social systems, political authority, national belonging, economic life, environmental issues, or images of humanity. They are shaped by both individual differences and broader cultural contexts.
These measures assess beliefs about whether the social world is fair, legitimate, predictable, and morally ordered. They include assumptions about deservingness, justice, trust in existing institutions, and the tendency to see the current social system as justified or acceptable.
The Just World Scale (Rubin & Peplau) assesses the belief that people generally get what they deserve and that outcomes are distributed in a fair or morally meaningful way.
The Belief in a Just World Scale distinguish between beliefs that the world is fair to oneself and beliefs that the world is fair in general.
The System Justification Scale (SJS) assesses the tendency to perceive existing social, economic, and political arrangements as fair, legitimate, and desirable.
The Social Worldviews Scales assess generalized beliefs about the social world, particularly perceptions of society as competitive versus cooperative and dangerous versus safe.
These instruments assess generalized expectations about other people: whether they are seen as trustworthy, honest, cooperative, hostile, selfish, or potentially dangerous. They also include broad acceptance of others as a basic interpersonal and social attitude.
The Trust in People Scale assesses generalized trust in others, reflecting expectations about the honesty, reliability, and goodwill of people.
The Acceptance of Others Scale captures tolerance and openness toward others, reflecting a non-judgmental interpersonal and social orientation.
The Interpersonal Trust Scale assesses general expectations about the trustworthiness, honesty, and reliability of other people in interpersonal relationships.
The General Trust Scale assesses broad dispositional trust, reflecting the extent to which individuals tend to expect others to be dependable, fair, and well-intentioned.
The Cynical Distrust Scale assesses distrustful beliefs about human motives, including expectations of selfishness, deception, and exploitation.
These instruments examine ideological orientations related to authority, conformity, hierarchy, conservatism, dogmatism, and support for group-based inequality.
The Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWA) assesses tendencies toward submission to authority, adherence to conventions, and aggression toward norm violators. It is one of the most widely used measures of authoritarian attitudes.
The Social Dominance Orientation Scale (SDO) assesses preferences for group-based hierarchy and inequality, capturing the extent to which individuals support dominance of higher-status groups over lower-status groups.
The Social and Economic Conservatism Scale (SECS) assesses conservative attitudes across social and economic domains, providing a compact measure of ideological orientation.
The Survey of Dictionary-based Isms (SDI-46) assesses attitudes toward a broad range of ideological, political, social, and philosophical belief systems represented by common “-isms.”
The Fascism Scale (F-scale) represents a foundational attempt to operationalize anti-democratic and rigid ideological tendencies. ✝ historical
The Modern Comprehensive F Scale-9 (MCFS-9) assesses authoritarian attitudes based on a modernized version of the classical F-scale tradition.
The Dogmatism Scale (D Scale) captures cognitive rigidity and resistance to belief change, reflecting a generalized closed-minded orientation across domains. ✝ historical
These measures assess attitudes toward citizenship, patriotism, law, political participation, social change, justice, national belonging, and the relationship between the individual, society, and the state.
The Blind and Constructive Patriotism scales assess two forms of national attachment: blind patriotism, characterized by uncritical loyalty and intolerance of criticism, and constructive patriotism, characterized by attachment to the country combined with support for critical reflection and positive change.
The Verbal Fusion Scale, developed in identity fusion research by Gomez and colleagues, assesses the perceived merging of personal and group identity, including feelings of oneness with a group and willingness to act on its behalf.
These measures assess broad worldview assumptions about the nature of reality, human agency, determinism, chance, and personal or social control. Unlike personal optimism or explanatory style, they describe more general beliefs about how reality is structured and how much influence people have over events.
The Attitudes About Reality Scale (AAR) assesses epistemological worldviews related to the nature of reality, causality, and social organization, contrasting socially constructed and change-oriented perspectives with more stable and essentialist views.
The Free Will and Determinism (FAD-Plus) assesses lay beliefs about free will, scientific determinism, fatalistic determinism, and unpredictability.
The Scale of General Fatalism (GFAT) assesses beliefs about fate, predetermination, and lack of personal control, which are often associated with religious or cultural worldviews.
These approaches assess how people attribute human qualities, agency, experience, or mental capacities to others. They are relevant to social perception, moral judgment, dehumanization, and beliefs about personhood.
The Perceived Human Uniqueness Scale assesses the extent to which individuals or groups are attributed qualities considered uniquely human, such as rationality, self-control, morality, and cultural refinement. It is relevant to research on dehumanization, intergroup perception, and social evaluation.
The Mind Perception Scale assesses perceived mental capacities, commonly distinguishing between agency, or the capacity for intention and self-control, and experience, or the capacity for feelings, sensations, pain, and pleasure. It is used in research on social cognition, moral judgment, dehumanization, and perceptions of humans, animals, machines, or social groups.
These measures assess identification with humanity, global belonging, and attitudes toward risks that affect humanity as a whole. They focus on whether people see themselves as connected to all humans, value the survival and future of humanity, and cognitively, emotionally, or behaviorally respond to global threats.
The Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAS) assesses the extent to which individuals feel connected to, care about, and identify with all human beings rather than only local, national, or familiar groups.
The Global Social Identification Scale assesses identification with the global human community and the extent to which people experience humanity as a meaningful social group.
The Global-Human Identity Scale assesses the degree to which individuals define themselves as members of humanity as a whole and experience a sense of global human identity.
These instruments assess normlessness, powerlessness, meaninglessness, distrust, and alienation from society, institutions, community, or other people.
The McClosky and Schaar Anomy Scale assesses anomie as a sense of normlessness, social disconnection, and distrust in the social order.
The Dean Alienation Scale assesses alienation across dimensions such as powerlessness, normlessness, and social isolation.
The Srole Anomia Scale assesses anomia as a subjective sense of social disintegration, interpersonal distrust, and disconnection from shared social norms.
The Middleton Alienation Scale assesses alienation through dimensions such as powerlessness, normlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation, and self-estrangement.
The School Alienation Scale (SALS) assesses school alienation among students across domains such as classmates, teachers, and learning.
These measures assess beliefs, emotions, motives, and behavioral tendencies connected with money, spending, saving, debt, financial autonomy, investment, consumer behavior, and new forms of economic exchange.
The Material Values Scale (MVS) assesses materialism as a consumer value, including the centrality of possessions, the belief that acquisition contributes to happiness, and the use of possessions as indicators of success.
The Klontz Money Script Inventory (KMSI) assesses money-related beliefs and attitudes, including money avoidance, money worship, money status, and money vigilance.
The New Money Behavior Quiz assesses everyday money behavior patterns and financial “types,” including characteristic ways of spending, saving, managing, and relating to money.
The Adolescent Money Attitude Scales assess adolescents' money-related attitudes, especially entitlement and conscientiousness in financial behavior.
The Money Ethic Scale (MES) assesses the meaning and psychological value of money, including beliefs about money as good, evil, achievement, respect, budget, and power.
The Financial Threat Scale (FTS) assesses perceived financial threat, including feelings of risk, uncertainty, and insecurity about one's personal financial situation.
These instruments assess attitudes toward nature, environmental concern, ecological responsibility, and motives for environmentally relevant behavior.
The Motivation Toward the Environment Scale (MTES) assesses intrinsic motivation, forms of extrinsic motivation, and amotivation for engaging in environmental behaviors.
The Environmental Concern Scale (ECS) assesses concern about environmental problems, ecological risks, and the perceived importance of protecting the natural environment.
The Nature Relatedness Scale (NRS) assesses people's affective, cognitive, and experiential connection with the natural world.
The Ecocentric and Anthropocentric Attitudes Toward the Environment (EAATE) scale assesses environmental attitudes based on nature-centered and human-centered reasons for valuing and protecting the environment.
⇒ Culture & Intergroup Relations. Many social attitudes concern groups and difference, so cultural identity, acculturation, prejudice, tolerance, and intergroup distance are important neighboring constructs.
⇒ Social Functioning. Beliefs about society may influence how people communicate, adapt, seek support, and behave in everyday social contexts.
⇒ Existential Concerns. Social worldviews may overlap with beliefs about freedom, responsibility, alienation, agency, meaninglessness, and control.
⇒ Gender Roles. Gender-role beliefs, sexism, egalitarian attitudes, and attitudes toward women and men are considered in this domain.
Social attitudes form interconnected systems of beliefs about society, authority, justice, groups, money, environment, and human nature. They should be interpreted as directed evaluations of social objects rather than as general personality traits.
Assessment in this domain helps clarify how people understand social order, justify or challenge institutions, relate to civic life, evaluate economic and environmental issues, and construct broader images of humanity and society.