Thanks for the links. Friedman's criticism seems to be that the questions were politically biased because they chose examples such as the church for right-orientated authorities.

When the question is of the form "We should follow authority X," X just happens to be a source of authority, such as the church, more popular on the right than on the left.

Altemeyer's response is:

"When one is measuring submission to established authority in a society, one has to mention those authorities, their views, etc. in the items."

Do you have a criticism of Altemeyer's response? Because it seems that it makes sense. RWA is supposed to be about adherence to established authorities, not hypothetical authorities. Friedman says:

Suppose, for instance, that one of the questions asked whether a worker should be willing to cross a picket line and go to work if he disagreed with the decision to call a strike. Labor unions are established authorities.

This is certainly a far more contentious proposition than the one he's rejecting, if the premise is that labor unions have the same level of established authority as the church.

My answer to Friedman would be: come up with established authorities that are left-wing and just as established as right-wing ones. Of course this may be impossible almost by definition, leading to a "loaded by default" personality assessment, but that's another discussion entirely.