Note: These items measure only the four isms factors. For scoring key, see
The table includes two additional factors based on social attitudes that are not strongly indexed by isms. If you wish to include the markers for those additional markers, it is recommended that they be added to those below, interspersed among the items below. In the newer set of 40 items referenced elswhere on this website, these two additional factors are combined into a single fifth dimension.
For information on this measure, see Saucier (2008).
Feel free to copy and print out the remainder of this htm page for use as a research measure.
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Brief Survey of Beliefs and Opinions
Below you will find statements concerning personal philosophy, the nature of reality, truth and knowledge, religion and spirituality. social and political movements, and standards for conduct. Please honestly and accurately indicate your degree of agreement and disagreement with each statement does it provide an accurate description of your beliefs? Remember that your responses are anonymous please do not write your name on the survey.
Read each statement, then indicate the extent of your agreement with the statement using the following rating scale:
1 - Strongly and completely DISAGREE
2 - Moderately or mostly DISAGREE
3 - Neither agree nor disagree; neutral, uncertain, or don't understand the statement
4 - Moderately or mostly AGREE
5 - Strongly and completely AGREE
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___ Enlightenment can be gained through meditation, self-contemplation, and intuition.
___ I love and am devoted to my country.
___ There's little value in strict adherence to religious scriptures.
___ I believe in the superiority of my own ethnic group.
___ No objects have magical or spiritual powers.
___ The pleasures of the senses are the highest good.
___ I believe in predestination that all things have been divinely determined beforehand.
___ All forms of government are oppressive and undesirable and should be abolished.
___ The individual soul can be mystically united with the single source from which all existence comes.
___ I am opposed to constitutional forms of government.
___ I don't believe in a messiah who will come to save the world.
___ Worldly possessions are the greatest good and highest value in life.
___ Animals don't have souls or spirits.
___ Nonmaterial attributes are more important than outward beauty.
___ There is no God or gods.
___ I have profound respect for historical institutions, laws, and traditions.
___ Practices like meditation will not lead one to enlightenment.
___ I don't see much use in adhering strictly and literally to the law.
___ Religion should play the most important role in civil affairs.
___ There is a higher good than the pleasures of the senses.
___ Natural objects (and even Nature itself) have conscious life
___ Knowledge is the awareness of individual facts and an understanding of the logical relations among these facts.
___ People ought to be motivated by something beyond their own self-interest
___ I dislike my country.
___ My own race is not superior to any other race.
___ The world is ruled by the opposing forces of good and evil.
___ I believe in government by law with the consent of those people governed.
___ The self is the only reality.