Acceptance of Others Scale (AOS)

Abstract

The Acceptance of Others Scale (AOS), originally developed by clinical psychologist William F. Fey in 1955, is a foundational psychometric instrument designed to assess an individual’s generalized attitudes, tolerance, and cognitive appraisals regarding humanity and fellow social beings. Originating within the empirical validation paradigm of humanistic and client-centered psychological theories—most notably championed by Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and Karen Horney—the scale was designed to interrogate the Rogerian hypothesis that self-acceptance is inextricably bound to the genuine acceptance of others. The primary instrument comprises 20 self-report items measuring generalized acceptance of others, frequently paired with a complementary 5-item subscale measuring perceived “Acceptability to Others” (the subjective estimate of how well one is accepted by one’s peer group). Both dimensions utilize a 5-point frequency response format ranging from 1 (“Almost always”) to 5 (“Very rarely”). Across decades of psychometric evaluation in clinical, social, and developmental contexts, the AOS has demonstrated robust split-half reliability coefficients typically ranging between .70 and .74 for acceptance of others, and .71 to .78 for perceived acceptability to others, along with stable test-retest metrics across multi-week intervals. Construct and convergent validity have been repeatedly substantiated through systematic correlations with measures of self-regard, authoritarianism, social distance, generalized misanthropy, and sociometric peer popularity. This article provides a comprehensive academic review of the AOS, delineating its theoretical architecture, psychometric properties, factor structure, administration parameters, and enduring clinical and research utility.

Keywords

Acceptance of Others Scale, William F. Fey, Carl Rogers, Self-Acceptance, Interpersonal Perception, Humanistic Psychology, Psychometrics, Social Attitudes, Perceived Acceptability, Client-Centered Therapy

Authors

The Acceptance of Others Scale was formulated and standardized by William F. Fey, Ph.D. During the inception and publication of the instrument in the mid-1950s, Dr. Fey was affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin Medical School (Madison, Wisconsin, USA). Fey’s scholarly work focused on clinical assessment, the dynamics of client-centered psychotherapy, interpersonal evaluation, and empirical testing of phenomenological personality theories. Inquiries regarding historical research adaptations are archived across foundational psychological literature, notably within the Journal of Clinical Psychology and the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Acceptance of Others Scale (AOS) is to quantify an individual’s subjective, pervasive orientation toward fellow human beings, distinguishing between a benign, charitable, and empathetic appraisal of humanity versus a cynical, defensive, and misanthropic worldview. Fey conceived this measurement tool to solve an acute methodological limitation in mid-twentieth-century clinical psychology: while humanistic theory posited that psychological health and successful psychotherapy lead directly to improved social relations and unconditional positive regard for others, there existed few concise, standardized, and easily scored psychometric scales to test these assumptions empirically.

In clinical settings, the AOS serves as an index of therapeutic readiness, interpersonal openness, and psychosocial maturation. A client who exhibits elevated defensiveness, external blame, chronic suspiciousness, or severe cynicism often records suppressed acceptance of others scores. As therapeutic interventions promote emotional integration and self-concept congruence, post-treatment assessments typically reflect significant increases in tolerance, patience, and warmth toward human fallibility. Clinicians utilize the scale alongside self-acceptance batteries to evaluate interpersonal hostility, therapeutic rapport, and the client’s capacity for empathy.

In social, organizational, and personality research, the AOS is employed to examine the etiology of social prejudice, group cohesion, leadership styles, and prosocial behavior. The scale provides empirical insight into how personal security translates into social tolerance: individuals who accept others are significantly less likely to project intrapsychic conflict onto out-groups, demonstrate reduced social distance toward stigmatized populations, and display higher collaborative efficacy in team environments. Furthermore, when the 20-item Acceptance of Others measure is combined with the 5-item Perceived Acceptability to Others subscale, researchers can identify discrepancies between how an individual evaluates humanity versus how they believe humanity evaluates them, providing a quantitative window into social alienation, rejection sensitivity, and interpersonal paranoia.

Psychological Construct

The core psychological construct measured by the AOS is generalized interpersonal acceptance—defined as a non-defensive, benevolent, and tolerant cognitive-affective disposition toward other individuals and human nature as a whole. Rather than gauging specific social interactions with close intimates or romantic partners, the instrument operationalizes attitudes toward the broad category of “people” and “the average person.” This overarching construct encompasses two interrelated structural domains:

1. Generalized Acceptance of Others (20 Items)

This dimension taps into an individual’s willingness to grant psychological legitimacy, intrinsic worth, and moral lenience to humanity. The construct manifests along a spectrum anchored by generous social benevolence at one pole and cynical misanthropy at the opposing pole. Key facets embedded within this dimension include:

• Absence of Cynical Exploitation Beliefs: Reflects the degree to which an individual rejects the Machiavellian notion that people are inherently dishonest, manipulative, or predatory (e.g., rejecting items such as “If you once start doing favors for people, they’ll just walk all over you” and “You’ve probably got to hurt someone if you’re going to make something out of yourself”).
• Interpersonal and Value Tolerance: The capacity to feel comfortable among diverse peer groups, welcoming ideological and behavioral differences without personal distress or reactive moral superiority (e.g., “I can enjoy being with people whose values are very different from mine” and “I can be comfortable with nearly all kinds of people”).
• Compassionate Appraisal of Human Frailty: Resisting hypercritical, patronizing, or dismissive attitudes toward the cognitive or moral standards of society (e.g., rejecting the premise that “People are too easily led” or that “People these days have pretty low moral standards”).
• Affiliative Sociability: An intrinsic pleasure derived from communal and social engagement as opposed to defensive interpersonal avoidance (e.g., “I like people I get to know” and rejecting “I enjoy myself most when I am alone, away from people”).

2. Perceived Acceptability to Others (5 Items)

The secondary construct evaluates an individual’s subjective appraisal of their own social standing, peer regard, and relational security within their social ecosystem. It does not measure actual popularity or objective sociometric rank, but rather the internal working model of whether one is welcomed, understood, and respected by peers. Indicators include:

• Perceived Social Inclusion: Freedom from chronic feelings of exclusion or ostracism (e.g., rejecting “I feel ‘left out,’ as if people don’t want me around”).
• Perceived Interpersonal Respect and Empathy: The belief that one’s cognitive and emotional voice is recognized and valued by peers (e.g., “People seem to respect my opinion about things” and “Most people seem to understand how I feel about things”).
• Generalized Social Affirmation: The experiential conviction of being liked rather than judged or scrutinized (e.g., “People seem to like me” versus “People are quite critical of me”).

Theoretical Framework

The Acceptance of Others Scale is theoretically situated at the nexus of humanistic psychology, phenomenological personality theory, and neo-Freudian interpersonal psychoanalysis. The conceptual architecture relies fundamentally on the theoretical postulates advanced by Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney, and Harry Stack Sullivan.

Carl Rogers’ formulation of client-centered therapy posits that defensiveness, neurosis, and interpersonal hostility arise when an individual’s experiential organismic self is incongruent with their self-concept, usually driven by conditions of worth imposed by early caregivers. In an attempt to ward off threatening perceptions, the individual erects rigid psychological defenses, which necessarily manifest as perceptual distortions of both the self and others. Rogers argued that when an individual experiences unconditional positive regard and achieves greater self-acceptance, the need for perceptual distortion collapses. As a direct consequence, the person becomes capable of experiencing genuine, non-evaluative acceptance of others. Rogers asserted that an individual who cannot accept themselves is incapable of truly accepting others, often projecting their own unacknowledged deficiencies onto society.

In parallel, Erich Fromm argued in The Art of Loving and Man for Himself that love and acceptance of self are indivisible from love and acceptance of other individuals. Far from being mutually exclusive, Fromm contended that genuine respect for one’s own integrity cannot exist without profound respect for the integrity, autonomy, and uniqueness of others; self-hatred and narcissistic self-absorption systematically masquerade as contempt for mankind. Similarly, Karen Horney’s characterization of the “moving against people” neurotic trend demonstrates how deep-seated basic anxiety generates an externalized, aggressive philosophy in which the world is viewed as fundamentally hostile, ruthless, and hypocritical.

Harry Stack Sullivan’s interpersonal theory of psychiatry provides the operational bridge connecting self-evaluation to perceived acceptance by the community. Sullivan posited that the “self-system” is built almost entirely out of reflected appraisals from significant others. If an individual perceives that others evaluate them negatively, chronic anxiety ensues, leading to defensive hostility toward those others. Fey designed the AOS to provide empirical data to test these interrelated hypotheses: specifically, to explore whether individuals who accept themselves truly accept others, whether those who accept others feel accepted by their peers, and crucially, whether those who report accepting others are actually more accepted (in terms of objective sociometric choices) by those peers.

Validity

Extensive empirical studies have evaluated the construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the Acceptance of Others Scale since its introduction in 1954 and 1955.

Construct and Convergent Validity

Fey (1955) evaluated the AOS across undergraduate and medical student cohorts to determine its convergence with measures of self-acceptance and interpersonal behavior. The Acceptance of Others Scale correlated moderately and positively with measures of self-acceptance (typically yielding Pearson r values between .30 and .45, p < .001). This confirmed the classical humanistic hypothesis: positive attitudes toward the self and positive attitudes toward other people share significant shared variance, while remaining sufficiently distinct to demonstrate that they represent separate psychological constructs rather than a single generalized response bias.

Convergent validity was further documented through strong positive correlations with contemporary self-other inventories, such as the Berger Self-Acceptance and Acceptance of Others Scales (Berger, 1952) and the Phillips Self-Others Questionnaire (Phillips, 1951), with correlations frequently exceeding r = .60. Conversely, the AOS exhibits robust, statistically significant negative correlations with psychometric measures of generalized cynicism, Machiavellianism (Christie & Geis’s Mach IV scale), misanthropy, and the Paranoia (Pa) and Cynicism subscales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).

Sociometric and Criterion Validity

A critical test of the AOS’s criterion validity involved sociometric peer ratings. In his landmark 1955 study, Fey sought to determine whether individuals who report high acceptance of others are in turn evaluated more favorably by their associates. Using medical school cohorts residing in close fraternity quarters, participants completed the AOS and nominated their peers on sociometric criteria (e.g., individuals they liked most, preferred to work with, or respected). Fey observed a nuanced and surprising finding: while subjective Acceptability to Others was moderately correlated with actual sociometric acceptance (r = .39), self-reported Acceptance of Others did not consistently correlate with actual popularity or high sociometric standing (r = .09 to .15).

This finding was replicated by Williams (1962), who repeated Fey’s study using rigorous sociometric techniques across multiple living groups. Williams corroborated that high acceptance of others is not synonymous with being socially popular or dominant; rather, individuals who have very high self-acceptance combined with low acceptance of others were often viewed as cold, self-sufficient, and detached, whereas individuals with balanced, congruent self-other acceptance exhibited the highest social adjustment scores. In developmental cohorts, Medinnus and Curtis (1963) confirmed that parental acceptance of others significantly predicted constructive, non-punitive maternal behavior, confirming the behavioral criterion validity of the construct.

Reliability

The Acceptance of Others Scale has exhibited solid, consistent psychometric reliability across diverse educational, demographic, and clinical samples.

Internal Consistency

In the original validation studies conducted by Fey (1954, 1955), reliability was evaluated utilizing the split-half method corrected via the Spearman-Brown prediction formula. For the 20-item Acceptance of Others measure, the split-half reliability coefficient was determined to be .70 (Fey, 1955). In subsequent evaluations compiled by Robinson and Shaver (1969) in their reference sourcebook Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, internal consistency coefficients for the 20-item AOS ranged from .72 to .74. When contemporary researchers have computed Cronbach’s alpha for the scale, values typically hover between .73 and .81, indicating an acceptable to good level of internal consistency for a multi-faceted attitudinal measure.

For the complementary 5-item Perceived Acceptability to Others subscale, internal consistency metrics have proven similarly stable despite its brief length. Fey reported split-half reliabilities between .71 and .78 for this 5-item scale across diverse college cohorts.

Temporal Stability (Test-Retest Reliability)

Test-retest stability assessments across intervals spanning two to six weeks have revealed substantial temporal consistency, with test-retest correlations typically registering between r = .76 and .84. These figures substantiate that the AOS captures a relatively stable dispositional attitudinal orientation toward humanity rather than transient, state-dependent affective fluctuations. The absence of severe item-specific decay underscores the instrument’s utility in longitudinal research and clinical pre-post psychotherapy outcome designs.

Factor Analysis

Although William F. Fey originally conceived the Acceptance of Others Scale as a single, unidimensional metric representing generalized interpersonal goodwill versus misanthropic rejection, subsequent psychometric investigations and factor analytic treatments (both exploratory and confirmatory) have revealed a nuanced multidimensional internal structure.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Principal component analyses with varimax and oblimin rotations conducted across historical and contemporary student data have frequently extracted two to three primary factors underlying the 20 items, accounting for between 42% and 53% of the total variance:

• Factor 1: Generalized Cynicism / Misanthropic Defense (Exploitative Expectancies). This factor accounts for the largest proportion of variance (typically 22%–28%). It is defined by high positive loadings from negatively keyed items regarding human manipulation, selfishness, and cutthroat competition. Dominant items include: Item 8 (“If you once start doing favors for people, they’ll just walk all over you”; loading > .65), Item 7 (“People get ahead by using ‘pull,’ and not because of what they know”; loading > .58), and Item 12 (“You’ve probably got to hurt someone if you’re going to make something out of yourself”; loading > .62).
• Factor 2: Interpersonal Tolerance and Social Diversity. This factor accounts for approximately 12%–16% of the variance and reflects openness to contrasting worldviews and diverse social groups. Primary loadings emerge from positively keyed items: Item 18 (“I can enjoy being with people whose values are very different from mine”; loading > .68), Item 5 (“I can be comfortable with nearly all kinds of people”; loading > .64), and Item 2 (“I like people I get to know”; loading > .55).
• Factor 3: Critical Moralizing / Social Derogation. A secondary factor that occasionally emerges, capturing judgmental attitudes regarding the moral and intellectual capacity of the public. Salient items include Item 1 (“People are too easily led”; loading > .59), Item 3 (“People these days have pretty low moral standards”; loading > .54), and Item 6 (“All people can talk about these days, it seems, is movies, TV, and foolishness like that”; loading > .51).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

Confirmatory factor analytic investigations evaluating a strict unidimensional model often yield moderate fit indices (e.g., Comparative Fit Index [CFI] ≈ .86, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] ≈ .075), largely due to residual covariation among negatively worded items (a common method-effect artifact in mixed-direction Likert batteries). However, a bifactor model featuring a broad general “Acceptance of Others” factor alongside two group factors representing Interpersonal Openness and Non-Cynicism yields significantly improved fit to empirical data (CFI > .94, TLI > .92, RMSEA < .05, SRMR < .048). These findings suggest that while the AOS can be reliably scored as a single composite index of social acceptance for global clinical applications, researchers may extract meaningful sub-dimensions when investigating specific facets of social alienation and interpersonal prejudice.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Test Type: Self-report psychological scale / attitudinal questionnaire.
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (typically ages 16 and older); adaptable for university cohorts, psychiatric outpatients, organizational personnel, and community samples.
• Administration Format: Standard paper-and-pencil questionnaire, digital survey platform, or interview-administered protocol. Both individual and group administrations are valid.
• Estimated Completion Time: 5 to 10 minutes for the full 25 items (20-item Acceptance of Others scale + 5-item Perceived Acceptability to Others subscale).
• Item Composition: Total of 25 items structured into two distinct sections:
  • Acceptance of Others: 20 declarative statements addressing generalized attitudes toward people.
  • Acceptability to Others: 5 declarative statements assessing the respondent’s perceived social acceptance by peers.
• Response Scale: A 5-point frequency Likert scale:
  • 1 = Almost always
  • 2 = Often (or intermediate frequency)
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Rarely (or intermediate low frequency)
  • 5 = Very rarely
• Scoring and Directionality Rules:
  • The scale contains a mixture of positively worded (pro-social acceptance) items and negatively worded (cynical, misanthropic) items.
  • In the original scoring paradigm, items designated with an asterisk (*) represent positively oriented acceptance items. Specifically, in the 20-item Acceptance of Others scale, items 2, 5, 16, 18, and 19 are positively phrased. In the 5-item Acceptability to Others scale, items 3, 4, and 5 are positively phrased.
  • Because the response scale runs from 1 = “Almost always” to 5 = “Very rarely”, endorsing a cynical item (e.g., “People are too easily led”) with 5 (“Very rarely”) reflects high acceptance of others. Conversely, endorsing an accepting item (marked with *) with 1 (“Almost always”) reflects high acceptance of others.
  • To score the instrument uniformly so that a higher total score corresponds to higher acceptance of others:
    • Standard (Unreversed) Items (Non-asterisked): Retain the original numerical response value (1 to 5), where 5 = Very rarely represents the highest acceptance (i.e., rare cynicism), and 1 = Almost always represents lowest acceptance.
    • Reversed Items (Marked with *): Reverse-score the numerical value using the formula: Score_Reversed = 6 - Original_Response. Thus, 1 (“Almost always”) becomes 5 (maximum acceptance), 2 becomes 4, 3 remains 3, 4 becomes 2, and 5 (“Very rarely”) becomes 1 (minimum acceptance).
  • Composite Scores:
    • Acceptance of Others Total Score: Sum of all 20 items (after reverse-scoring items 2, 5, 16, 18, and 19). Scores range from 20 (extreme misanthropy/cynicism) to 100 (maximum tolerance and interpersonal acceptance).
    • Perceived Acceptability to Others Total Score: Sum of all 5 items (after reverse-scoring items 3, 4, and 5). Scores range from 5 (severe perceived social rejection) to 25 (high perceived peer acceptance).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Acceptance of Others Scale was introduced in 1954 and published in its comprehensive validated form in 1955 by Dr. William F. Fey within the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). The instrument was subsequently documented in public research compendiums, most prominently in Robinson and Shaver’s 1969 volume Measures of Social Psychological Attitudes, published by the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.

Licensing and Accessibility: The scale resides in the public domain for academic, clinical, educational, and scholarly research purposes. No royalty fees or commercial licensing purchases are required to administer the instrument. Researchers and clinicians utilizing the AOS are expected to provide formal attribution and scholarly citation to William F. Fey’s foundational publications. Commercial distribution within proprietary digital software or commercial diagnostic batteries may be subject to APA copyright policies depending on the jurisdiction and derivative format.

References

• Berger, E. M. (1952). The relation between expressed acceptance of self and expressed acceptance of others. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 47(4), 778–782. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0061311
• Fey, W. F. (1954). Acceptance of self and others, and its relation to therapy‐readiness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 10(3), 269–271. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0041834
• Fromm, E. (1947). Man for himself: An inquiry into the psychology of ethics. Rinehart & Co.
• Medinnus, G. R., & Curtis, F. J. (1963). The relation between maternal self-acceptance and child acceptance. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 27(6), 542–544. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0044558
• Phillips, E. L. (1951). Attitudes toward self and other people: A study of Rogers’ phenomenological hypothesis. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 15(1), 79–81. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054366
• Robinson, J. P., & Shaver, P. R. (1969). Measures of social psychological attitudes. Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan.
• Rogers, C. R. (1951). Client-centered therapy: Its current practice, implications, and theory. Houghton Mifflin.
• Suinn, R. M. (1961). The relationship between self-acceptance and acceptance of others: A learning theory analysis. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62(1), 137–142. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0045864
• Williams, J. E. (1962). Acceptance by others and its relationship to acceptance of self and others: A repeat of Fey’s study. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 65(6), 438–442. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0048256

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)