The Psychology of Politics

The T-factor is Eysenck's second dimension of political attitudes, orthogonal to the familiar Radical–Conservative (R) dimension. He labels it Tough-minded versus Tender-minded, borrowing William James's terms for qualities of character that influence philosophy and social attitudes . His central theoretical claim is that the T-factor is not an ideological system at all but the projection of personality variables onto the attitude field: tough-mindedness reflects the extraverted personality type, tender-mindedness the introverted type . This explains why fascists and communists—who occupy opposite poles of the R dimension—both cluster at the tough-minded extreme, while liberals and conservatives occupy the tender-minded center . The dimension is thus temperamental, not political, in origin.

Adorno and colleagues' The Authoritarian Personality (1950) portrayed authoritarianism as a right-wing syndrome, linking conservatism to prejudice and fascist potential. Eysenck directly contradicts this, arguing from his research and personal experience in Germany that authoritarianism appears equally on the left and right—that Stalin was as authoritarian as Hitler, and communism as totalitarian as Nazism . In his model, fascists are 'tough conservatives' and communists are 'tough radicals,' both occupying the tough-minded extreme, while tender-minded liberals and conservatives occupy the center . This 'extremism theory' became a major alternative to Adorno's framework and anticipated later debates about left-wing authoritarianism.

Eysenck's data came from a sample of 750 respondents—250 conservatives, 250 liberals, and 250 socialists—who completed a 40-item Inventory of Social Attitudes . Factor analysis yielded the two independent factors he predicted. However, the T-scale faced devastating methodological criticism. Richard Christie, Milton Rokeach, and Charles Hanley reanalyzed Eysenck's data and found the T-scale collapsed under scrutiny for internal consistency . They also accused Eysenck of carelessness in assembling factual material, citing inconsistencies in dates and citations . A 2001 PsycCRITIQUES review noted that even in the reissue, 'several errors in the original edition have not been corrected' . The T-factor's empirical foundation remains disputed.

Eysenck continued to defend and elaborate the T-factor for decades. His 1975 revision divided the R-factor into economic and religious-moral components, a significant evolution of the original model . In 1978, he and Glenn Wilson published The Psychological Basis of Ideology, updating the position with additional data . Later studies by Wilson, Stone, and others generally confirmed the two-dimensional structure, though often with renamed factors (e.g., 'Humanism' for tender-mindedness) . Critics, however, observed that later works were 'aimed more to support the model than to test it,' and that imposing two-factor solutions made the model difficult to refute .

Robert E. Lane, reviewing in the American Political Science Review, described it as 'a work to be handled at arm's length, neither clasped to the bosom, nor rejected out of hand' . He praised the early chapters on opinion measurement and attitude organization as 'excellent' and 'lucid,' but noted that 'under this scrutiny (and additional scrutiny by Rokeach), the T-scale collapses' . Lane also found the chapter on learning theory 'curiously foreign to the world of politics,' wishing for closer guidance on political processes. Yet he concluded that the book's data and methods offered 'better insights into the nature of ideologies than is available in most of the literature dealing with political ideas' .

The Psychology of Politics was first published in 1954 by Routledge & Kegan Paul in London, running 317 pages . A US edition appeared in 1955 from Frederick A. Praeger . A 1999 reissue from Transaction Publishers includes a new introduction by Eysenck written shortly before his death in 1997 . The book is Eysenck's major statement on social attitudes, though John Ray notes his interest in the topic began as early as 1944 and continued until at least 1981 . It applies the dimensional personality framework from Dimensions of Personality (1947) to the political domain, and its T-factor concept connects to his later biological work on extraversion.