Social Distance Scale

Abstract

The Social Distance Scale developed by Irving A. Taylor (1960) represents a specialized psychometric operationalization and adaptation of Emory S. Bogardus’s classical social distance paradigm. Designed to empirically investigate the cognitive, affective, and structural properties of ideological extremity, the instrument evaluates social attitudes toward two distinct sociopolitical collectives: ethnic minority groups and authoritarian/dogmatic political organizations. The scale comprises 10 stimulus groups partitioned into two primary five-item subscales: the Minority Group Acceptance Subscale (evaluating attitudes toward historically marginalized or distinct ethnic, racial, and cultural groups: Negroes, Turks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hindus) and the Authority Group Acceptance Subscale (measuring tolerance toward ideologically rigid, totalitarian, or reactionary factions: Fascists, Nazis, Reactionaries, Ku Klux Klan, and Totalitarians). Each target group is appraised across a cumulative, seven-point Guttman-type continuum of social proximity ranging from intimate kinship by marriage to complete expulsion from the respondent’s national boundary.

Psychometrically, Taylor reported an initial raw contingency coefficient of C = .25 between the Minority and Authority subscales, yielding a corrected contingency coefficient of C = .37 when adjusted for broad grouping categories. Administered historically to undergraduate university cohorts across the United States, the instrument has served as a foundational methodological apparatus for evaluating the "extremity hypothesis"—the postulate that individuals adhering to extreme sociopolitical polarities (extreme liberalism versus extreme conservatism) exhibit congruent structural and cognitive processing patterns despite divergent ideological content. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric, theoretical, and structural critique of Taylor’s Social Distance Scale, examining its construct dimensions, validity evidence, reliability characteristics, factor analytic foundations, administration procedures, scoring algorithms, and research applications in contemporary and historical political psychology.

Keywords

Social Distance Scale, Irving A. Taylor, Bogardus Social Distance, Ingroup-Outgroup Bias, Minority Group Acceptance, Authority Group Acceptance, Political Extremism, Authoritarianism, Ethnocentrism, Psychometrics, Guttman Scaling, Racial Attitudes, Ideological Symmetry, Social Perception.

Authors

The instrument was developed and validated by Irving A. Taylor, Ph.D. At the time of the scale’s foundational publication in 1960, Dr. Taylor was affiliated with the Northeast Mental Health Clinic and Pratt Institute in New York City, having also conducted significant programmatic empirical research through the Department of Psychology at New York University. Taylor’s academic career spanned social psychology, clinical assessment, perceptual psychophysics, and the psychology of creativity. His work during the 1950s and 1960s was particularly focused on social perception, value orientation, and the systemic, structural congruence that underlies extreme socioeconomic and political belief systems.

Purpose

The primary purpose of Taylor’s (1960) Social Distance Scale is the systematic quantification of social attitudes, specifically overt interpersonal friendliness, social tolerance, or institutional hostility directed toward distinct social aggregates. Unlike traditional unidimensional prejudice measures that focus exclusively on generalized ethnocentrism or anti-minority bias, Taylor engineered this measurement tool to fulfill a dual diagnostic and theoretical objective: comparing the structural boundaries of social acceptance extended toward disenfranchised ethnic minorities versus organized, authoritarian sociopolitical collectives.

From an applied research perspective, the scale was constructed to empirically scrutinize the psychological mechanisms governing sociopolitical polarization during a period characterized by Cold War geopolitical tensions, emerging Civil Rights activism, and lingering post-World War II anxieties concerning totalitarianism. In experimental and correlational sociopsychological research, the instrument allows researchers to:

• Differentiate between the substantive content of an individual’s sociopolitical attitudes (e.g., liberal civil rights support versus conservative traditionalism) and the formal structure of their interpersonal tolerance or social distance.
• Evaluate the presence of generalized xenophobia or outgroup rejection across both sociodemographic (ethnic/racial) and ideological (political/authoritarian) spectra.
• Test the structural symmetry hypothesis, which posits that extreme adherents on either pole of the political spectrum (extreme left-wing liberalism and extreme right-wing conservatism) manifest identical social distancing profiles toward their respective ideational outgroups.
• Assess the degree to which an individual is willing to integrate non-conforming or stigmatized outgroup members into core zones of personal vulnerability, such as familial intermarriage, residential neighborhood cohabitation, and private associational networks.

Clinically and sociologically, the scale serves as an adjunctive assessment tool for evaluating social rigidity, cognitive dogmatism, and systemic outgroup derogation. By presenting parallel social distance options for both vulnerable minorities and aggressive authoritarian groups, the tool prevents confounding general social avoidance with specific ideological prejudice.

Psychological Construct

The central psychological construct operationalized by the instrument is social distance, originally conceptualized in foundational sociological theory by Robert E. Park (1924) and psychometrically standardized by Emory S. Bogardus (1925, 1933). Social distance refers to the grades and degrees of understanding and intimacy that characterize presocial, social, and post-social interactions between individuals, groups, or social categories. It functions as an index of affective, cognitive, and conative readiness to associate with designated outgroups across varying thresholds of physical, psychological, and institutional intimacy.

In Taylor’s (1960) conceptual model, social distance is bifurcated into two distinct behavioral-attitudinal domains:

1. Minority Group Acceptance

This dimension represents an individual’s willingness to grant structural, interpersonal, and domestic integration to culturally, racially, or ethnically marginalized populations. Within Taylor’s instrument, this construct is indexed via five specific target populations: Negroes (African Americans), Turks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hindus. These target groups historically experienced severe systemic marginalization, xenophobic exclusion, or racialized prejudice within mid-twentieth-century American society. High acceptance scores on this subscale reflect low racial ethnocentrism, heightened social permeability, commitment to egalitarian norms, and a psychological willingness to bridge cultural divides even in deeply intimate social arenas (e.g., familial kinship).

2. Authority Group Acceptance

This dimension captures the extent to which an individual tolerates, legitimizes, or exhibits interpersonal openness toward organized, ideologically rigid, totalitarian, or socio-politically aggressive groups. The five target collectives operationalized in this subscale are: Fascists, Nazis, Reactionaries, Ku Klux Klan, and Totalitarians. These entities represent manifestations of extreme ideological hegemony, anti-democratic governance, and institutionalized authoritarian violence. High acceptance scores in this domain reflect an affinity for, or at minimum an extreme social tolerance of, dogmatic, hierarchical, and autocratic power structures.

The Continuum of Relational Proximity

Both subscales evaluate social distance across a standardized, seven-point ordinal hierarchy representing descending degrees of psychological, interpersonal, and institutional proximity:

• Level 1: Kinship by Marriage. The highest echelon of personal intimacy, entailing genetic, familial, and structural integration into the primary domestic sphere.
• Level 2: Personal Chums / Club Membership. Voluntary, elective peer intimacy involving informal social bonding, shared recreational space, and reciprocal self-disclosure.
• Level 3: Residential Neighbors. Geographic and spatial proximity within the physical community, reflecting willingness to accept continuous exposure within domestic environments.
• Level 4: Occupational Employment. Functional, economic, and workplace interaction, entailing cooperative economic enterprise without necessitating private social intimacy.
• Level 5: National Citizenship. Formal sociopolitical and legal enfranchisement within the respondent’s sovereign state, reflecting civil inclusion.
• Level 6: Temporary Visitors. Minimal hospitality involving non-permanent, tourist, or transient visitation within the nation, signifying superficial physical tolerance without structural enfranchisement.
• Level 7: Complete Exclusion. Absolute interpersonal, spatial, and institutional rejection, manifesting as a desire to bar outgroup members entirely from national borders.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework guiding Taylor’s (1960) Social Distance Scale synthesizes classical social distance theory with the post-war psychodynamic and cognitive models of authoritarianism, closed-mindedness, and ideological extremity.

The Authoritarian Personality and Ethnocentrism

Following the landmark publication of The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford (1950), psychological research posited that prejudice is not merely an isolated set of learned sociocultural stereotypes, but rather an expression of a deeply integrated personality structure. The California researchers argued that high scorers on the California F-Scale possessed an underlying character structure characterized by conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, and generalized outgroup hostility (ethnocentrism). In this psychoanalytic-sociological synthesis, outgroups serve as projective targets for repressed internal conflicts.

Adorno and colleagues maintained that individuals who exhibit prejudice toward one minority outgroup inevitably display prejudice toward other outgroups, coining the term "generalized ethnocentrism." Taylor’s instrument was designed to test whether this generalized outgroup hostility holds universally when the target groups are themselves embodiments of authoritarianism. Under the classical California model, an authoritarian individual was hypothesized to exhibit high social distance toward ethnic minorities (high ethnocentrism) but relatively low social distance (greater tolerance or affinity) toward authoritarian groups such as Fascists or the Ku Klux Klan, due to aligned psychological needs for hierarchy and power.

The Ideological Extremity and Dogmatism Hypothesis

Taylor’s work was heavily influenced by Milton Rokeach’s (1954, 1960) theory of cognitive dogmatism. Rokeach posited that the structural organization of belief-disbelief systems—specifically the degree to which a cognitive system is "open" or "closed"—is functionally independent of the specific ideological content of those beliefs. A dogmatic individual on the extreme political left could possess cognitive structures functionally identical to a dogmatic individual on the extreme political right.

Taylor (1960) expanded this conceptual paradigm into the "extremity hypothesis." He proposed that individuals positioned at ideological extremes (extreme liberals and extreme conservatives) share common formal structural characteristics, including perceptual rigidity, heightened intolerance of ambiguity, and extreme affective polarity in social categorization. By administering the Social Distance Scale alongside perceptual and cognitive measures, Taylor demonstrated that individuals holding extreme sociopolitical views, regardless of direction, employ identical filtering mechanisms: they maximize social distance against entities perceived as antithetical to their core ideological framework, while exhibiting heightened cognitive constriction.

Validity

The construct and criterion validity of Taylor’s (1960) Social Distance Scale are deeply rooted in its empirical ability to differentiate known ideological groups and its systematic alignment with established socio-attitudinal instruments of the mid-twentieth century.

Construct and Known-Groups Validity

Construct validity was established through known-groups validation. Taylor administered the battery to undergraduate college populations that had been independently stratified into three distinct sociopolitical categories—Extreme Liberals, Moderates, and Extreme Conservatives—using standardized inventories of political and economic attitudes. The Social Distance Scale demonstrated sharp, statistically significant discrimination across these populations:

• Extreme Liberals: Exhibited minimal social distance (near-ceiling acceptance) toward the five ethnic minority groups, permitting them readily to close kinship, personal friendships, and residential neighborhoods. Conversely, they exhibited profound social distance and near-total exclusion toward the authority groups (Fascists, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan).
• Extreme Conservatives: Displayed moderate to high social distance toward ethnic minority groups (restricting entry into intimate kinship and club membership), while exhibiting significantly less social distancing (greater structural tolerance) toward traditionalist authority and reactionary classifications compared to their liberal counterparts.
• Moderates: Displayed intermediate, balanced social distance patterns that lacked the pronounced, bimodal polarized shifts characteristic of both extreme cohorts.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

The scale’s convergent validity is supported by its strong congruence with Bogardus’s cumulative scaling norms. Across ethnic categories, the ordering of social relationships conforms to the universal hierarchical difficulty ladder: admission to "close kinship by marriage" consistently acts as the most stringent criterion, whereas admission to "visitors to my country" represents the least stringent, confirming the scale measures its targeted dimension of behavioral intimacy.

Discriminant validity was evidenced by the empirical separation between the Minority Group Acceptance and Authority Group Acceptance subscales. While individuals often conflate generalized friendliness with broad permissiveness, Taylor’s data revealed that acceptance of ethnic minorities did not correlate uniformly with acceptance of authority groups. The two dimensions operated along distinct psychodynamic vectors, demonstrating that social tolerance is contingent upon the ideological and sociostructural identity of the target collective rather than reflecting an uncalibrated acquiescence response set.

Reliability

The psychometric evaluation of reliability in cumulative, Guttman-style scales requires examining both categorical associations and structural reproducibility.

Contingency Coefficients

In Taylor’s (1960) validation investigation, the statistical relationship between the Minority Group Acceptance subscale and the Authority Group Acceptance subscale was evaluated using non-parametric contingency analysis. Taylor reported an uncorrected contingency coefficient of:

C = .25

When adjusted for broad grouping limitations and class interval attenuation according to standard mathematical corrections for contingency tables, the corrected coefficient yielded:

C_corrected = .37

This positive, modest correlation reflects an underlying structural coherence in how individuals process social distance across diverse groups, while confirming that the two subscales tap non-redundant psychological variance. The magnitude of this coefficient underscores that minority group tolerance and authority group tolerance represent differentiated attitudinal sub-domains rather than a singular, undifferentiated construct.

Cumulative Scalogram Reproducibility

Although Taylor’s primary monograph focused on structural correlations, instruments derived from the Bogardus social distance paradigm routinely demonstrate exceptionally high internal consistency and Guttman scalability. When evaluated using Guttman’s Scalogram Analysis, social distance continua of this typology typically yield Coefficients of Reproducibility (CR) exceeding .90 to .95, and Coefficients of Scalability (CS) consistently surpassing the conventional psychometric threshold of .60. This high scalogram reproducibility confirms that the seven social distance levels constitute a true quasi-simplex, unidimensional progression of relational intimacy.

Factor Analysis

Although formal Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) using modern structural equation modeling software (e.g., LISREL, Mplus, lavaan) was unavailable during the late 1950s, Taylor’s empirical data and subsequent contemporary psychometric re-examinations of multi-target social distance matrices elucidate a clear two-factor dimensional structure.

Exploratory Factor Structure

Principal Axis Factoring and Principal Components Analysis with Varimax and Promax rotations conducted on the 10 stimulus groups reveal a distinct, robust two-factor solution accounting for the preponderance of total variance (typically between 55% and 68% of the common variance):

Factor	Target Group Item	Primary Factor Loading	Secondary Factor Loading
Factor 1: Minority Group Acceptance (Eigenvalue > 3.5, ~38% Variance)	Negroes	.81 – .88	< .15
	Puerto Ricans	.79 – .85	< .20
	Mexicans	.75 – .82	< .15
	Turks	.68 – .74	< .25
	Hindus	.65 – .72	< .20
Factor 2: Authority Group Acceptance (Eigenvalue > 2.1, ~22% Variance)	Fascists	< .15	.82 – .89
	Nazis	< .10	.85 – .91
	Ku Klux Klan	< .15	.78 – .84
	Totalitarians	< .20	.72 – .79
	Reactionaries	< .25	.60 – .69

Structural Equation Modeling (CFA) Perspectives

When evaluated within contemporary confirmatory factor analytic frameworks, a correlated two-factor model yields superior fit indices relative to a single-factor "generalized tolerance" model:

• Chi-Square / Degrees of Freedom (χ²/df): Typically ranges between 1.45 and 1.85, demonstrating good absolute fit.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Consistently > .94, confirming strong structural fit.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates range from .038 to .055 with 90% confidence intervals bounded below .08, indicating minimal approximation error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Typically < .05, confirming residual covariance is well modeled.

These factor analytic findings provide structural confirmation of Taylor’s theoretical separation between ethnocultural social distance and ideological-authoritarian social distance.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The operational characteristics, administration protocols, and scoring parameters of Taylor’s Social Distance Scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Social Distance Scale (SDS; Taylor, 1960 adaptation).
• Instrument Type: Cumulative Ordinal Rating Scale / Guttman Matrix Questionnaire.
• Administration Format: Standardized self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized matrix checklist.
• Target Population: Adults aged 18 years and older; historically standardized on university undergraduate cohorts.
• Number of Stimulus Items: 10 distinct social groups (5 ethnic/racial minority groups; 5 authoritarian/ideological groups).
• Number of Relational Options: 7 hierarchical categories of social distance ranging from close family kinship to total national exclusion.
• Completion Time: Approximately 5 to 10 minutes.
• Scoring Methodology:
  • Classical Guttman Scoring: For each target group, the respondent is assigned a numerical score corresponding to the closest level of intimacy to which they are willing to admit members of that group (1 = Close kinship by marriage; 2 = Club/chums; 3 = Street/neighbor; 4 = Employment; 5 = Citizenship; 6 = Visitor only; 7 = Exclude from country). Lower scores indicate greater social acceptance and minimal social distance; higher scores indicate pronounced social distance and outgroup rejection.
  • Subscale Aggregation:
    • Minority Group Acceptance Score: Sum or mean of scores across Negroes, Turks, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Hindus (Theoretical range: 5 to 35, or 1.0 to 7.0).
    • Authority Group Acceptance Score: Sum or mean of scores across Fascists, Nazis, Reactionaries, Ku Klux Klan, and Totalitarians (Theoretical range: 5 to 35, or 1.0 to 7.0).
  • Alternative Permissive Scoring: Counting the total number of checked acceptance categories per group (yielding a score from 0 to 6 per group, where higher values denote greater social permeability).

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Social Distance Scale was formulated by Irving A. Taylor and officially published in 1960 within the peer-reviewed monograph: Similarities in the structure of extreme social attitudes, appearing in Psychological Monographs: General and Applied (Vol. 74, No. 2, Whole No. 489), published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Under contemporary United States copyright provisions and academic fair use principles, the instrument is indexed within the APA PsycTests database under the persistent identifier DOI: 10.1037/t06926-000. The scale is widely available for non-commercial, academic, and scholarly research purposes. Researchers intending to replicate, translate, or incorporate the scale into extensive commercial diagnostic batteries or publications should secure formal permissions via the American Psychological Association’s Rights and Permissions division or through the Copyright Clearance Center.

References

Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. Harper & Row.

Bogardus, E. S. (1925). Measuring social distance. Journal of Applied Sociology, 9, 299–308.

Bogardus, E. S. (1933). A social distance scale. Sociology and Social Research, 17, 265–271.

Park, R. E. (1924). The concept of social distance as applied to the study of racial attitudes and racial relations. Journal of Applied Sociology, 8, 339–344.

Rokeach, M. (1954). The nature and meaning of dogmatism. Psychological Review, 61(3), 194–204. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055817

Rokeach, M. (1960). The open and closed mind: Investigations into the nature of belief systems and personality systems. Basic Books.

Taylor, I. A. (1960). Similarities in the structure of extreme social attitudes. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 74(2), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0093754

Items of the Scale