2. Purpose
• Ayn Rand’s contribution to both philosophy
and common discourse in business circles
is well documented and embodied in her
publication of Atlas Shrugged over a half-
century ago.
• This paper describes the examination of
Parnell & Dent’s objectivism scale.
3. Scale Assessment
• The scale purports to assess the four
categories that principally embody Rand’s
philosophy, including:
– Metaphysics
– Epistemology
– Ethics
– Politics
4. Outline
• A three-sample process of scale
development, starting with Rand’s four
categories
• Resulting in a multi-dimensional scale that
largely supports her conceptualization of
the construct
5. Scale
• Ayn Rand’s work has had a persistent and
recently resurgent interest since the
publication of Atlas Shrugged over a half-
century ago
• Her philosophy, Objectivism, purports to offer
a realistic philosophy that should allow for
successful achievement in life
• Presently no easy or systematic way to
determine whether an individual holds
Objectivist beliefs, and to what degree. There
is no extant scale to measure Objectivism
6. Scale
• This scale assesses the four categories that
principally embody Rand’s philosophy
– Metaphysics (Objective Reality),
– Epistemology (Reason),
– Ethics (Self-interest)
– Politics (Capitalism)
• Rand’s work was primarily outside of the
scholar community
• The work of predecessors had to be surfaced
to trace appropriately the development of
these four categories
7. Scale
• This paper outlines a three-sample
process of scale development, starting
with Rand’s four categories
– resulting in a multi-dimensional scale that
largely supports her conceptualization of the
construct
8. Randian Objectivism
• Rand was careful to define terms and work
logically
• Ambiguity around a term such as reason
created issues with scale development
– Two people both employing reason may still
come to different conclusions
9. Randian Objectivism
• The Politics category also presented a
challenge in scale development because
Rand’s briefest answer to her position in this
area is capitalism
• There are many elements of her philosophy
in politics
– Politics is commonly defined as “the science or
study of government and the state.”
– how and when the military should be employed,
are not encapsulated in the answer, capitalism
10. Data Analysis
Table 2: Scale Items
Item Subscale Factor Loading
Metaphysics (alpha=.600)
1. Reality exists as an objective absolute. .544
2. Reality is in part or in whole subjective; what is real to one person
is not necessarily real to another. (R) .791
3. Truth is neither absolute nor objective, but it is derived from each
individual’s understanding of things. (R) .714
4. Reality is the same for all individuals. .590
Epistemology (alpha=.772)
5. Reason is the most reliable means of perceiving reality. .831
6. Reason should be the only guide to a person’s actions. .592
7. One’s actions should always be guided by one’s reasoning ability. .821
8. Reason is man’s basic means of survival. .850
Ethics (alpha=.788)
9. Each person must exist for his or her own sake, not the wishes
of the community. .701
10. One should not be compelled to sacrifice oneself for the good of a
group. .705
11. One should never expect others to sacrifice for one’s own benefit. .856
12. The highest purpose for one’s life is the pursuit of one’s rational
self-interest. .623
13. One’s highest calling is to pursue one’s own desires in life. .600
14. There is nothing inherently immoral about the pursuit of self-
interests. .558
Politics (alpha=.831)
15. Capitalism is the only moral economic system because it is
based on voluntary exchange and mutual benefit. .760
16. Ideally, there should be a total separation of state and economics. .559
17. It is not necessary for the government to play a role in a nation’s
economic affairs. .714
18. A centrally planned economy is not moral because individuals are
not free to exchange their own capital and labor as they wish. .761
19. The government should play little if any role in a nation’s
economic affairs. .839
20. No unfair monopoly can develop if there is free trade in a free
market. .774
16. Data Analysis
Table 8 – Factor analyses of 3 maximally dissimilar items from samples 3 and 4
Pattern Matrix
Sample 3 N=310 (Promax Rotation) Component 1 Component 2
Reality exists as an objective absolute. .000 .999
I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar..769 .032
I really care about the fate of this organization. .771 -.032
Pattern Matrix
Sample 4 N=43 (Promax Rotation) Component 1 Component 2
Reality exists as an objective absolute. .000 .999
I find that my values and the organization’s values are very similar..893 .016
I really care about the fate of this organization. .893 -.016
21. Metaphysics
• The Oxford English Dictionary defines
metaphysics as:
• “the branch of philosophy that deals with the
first principles of things or reality, including
questions about being, substance, time and
space, causation, change, and identity (which
are presupposed in the special sciences but
do not belong to any one of them); theoretical
philosophy as the ultimate science of being
and knowing” (oed.com).
22. Metaphysics
• There are a variety of viewpoints about
metaphysics, including the postmodernist
perspective which claims
– “to have rejected not one thesis or another but
rather the entire philosophical tradition from
Plato through George Santayana” (Seaton,
1999).
• Metaphysics is perhaps better understood
by the questions in its domain rather than
by a definition
23. Metaphysics
• Rand was asked to describe the essence of
her philosophy while standing on one foot,
she began her response by stating that her
metaphysics is objective reality
• Rand (1982) characterizes this objective
reality in two primary ways:
– The primacy of existence or the primacy of
consciousness (p. 32). The universe is material
and exists independent of any entity’s conscious
experience of it.
– That everything has an identity, “things are what
they are” (p. 32).
24. Epistemology
• Epistemology:
– “the theory or science of the method or
grounds of knowledge,” (oed.com)
– A step toward practicality since its domain is
the method or approach used to access
reality, however defined metaphysically.
25. Epistemology
• Rand’s one-word description of her epistemology
is reason. As she did with metaphysical
questions, Rand (1982) has fashioned her
epistemology in the form of questions, first her
own perspective followed by one that she rejects:
– “Does man acquire knowledge by a process of
reason—or by sudden revelation from a supernatural
power? Is reason a faculty that identifies and
integrates the material provided by man’s senses—or
is it fed by innate ideas, implanted in man’s mind
before he was born? Is reason competent to perceive
reality—or does man possess some other cognitive
faculty which is superior to reason? Can man achieve
certainty—or is he doomed to perpetual doubt?”
26. Morality/Ethics
• . The Oxford English Dictionary defines
morality as “Relating to morals,” and moral
as “human character or behaviour
considered as good or bad; the distinction
between right and wrong, or good and evil,
in relation to the actions, desires, or
character of responsible human beings;
ethical” (oed.com)
27. Morality/Ethics
• Rand’s one-word description of her
morality/ethics is self-interest
– The “standard of value of the Objectivist
ethics—the standard by which one judges
what is good or evil—is man’s life, or: that
which is required for man’s survival qua man.
28. Politics
• Aristotle (and Plato) is also credited with
some of the earliest written documents on the
subjects of political ideology, fairness, justice,
and equity.
• The Oxford English Dictionary defines politics
as:
– “activities or policies associated with government,
esp. those concerning the organization and
administration of a state, or part of a state, and
with the regulation of relationships between
states” (oed.com).
29. Politics
• Politics is a far broader topic than the first
three introduced because there are so
many permutations of how individuals
intersect with the state and how states
interface with each other.
• Topics range from private property rights
to whom the state allows to marry to the
possibility of a currency being shared by
countries.
30. Politics
• Rand’s one-word description of her politics
is capitalism:
– “basic and crucial political issue of our age is:
capitalism versus socialism, or freedom
versus statism. For decades, this issue has
been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and
hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-
terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which
had lost their original meaning and could be
stretched to mean all things to all men” (Rand,
1966, p. 178).
31. Scale Development
• Authors collaborated and developed a 60-
item Likert-oriented instrument
including18, 12, 10, and 10 items as
prospective measures of the hypothesized
metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, and
political dimensions of the construct.
– A group of 114 managers were recruited to
complete the initial survey.
32. Scale Development
• Exploratory factor analyses were conducted
for each set of items corresponding to the
hypothesized dimensions
• Items with either communalities or factor
loadings below 0.4 were eliminated from
further consideration
• Eigenvalues, multi-factor solutions, and
correlations were also examined, resulting in
several additional removals
33. Scale Development
• Twenty-two items survived this stage of
scrutiny
• Six in each of the first three dimensions
and four in the political dimension
• Eleven additional items were developed
– one for each of the first three dimensions and
seven for the politics dimension
34. Scale Development
• In the second stage, the 32-item scale was
administered to another cross section of 213
practicing managers
– Results were subjected to exploratory factor
analyzes along the four dimensions
• Eigenvalues, multi-factor solutions, and
correlations were also examined as well
• Four items survived scrutiny in each of the
metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics
dimensions, and three items survived in the
politics dimension
35. Scale Development
• In the third stage, the resulting scale was
administered within a large Chinese
technology organization
– Two hundred and thirty responses were
received. All were in managerial positions
and 55.2 (127) were males
36. Item Analysis
• Metaphysics
– The metaphysics factor contained only four items
• Although 3 factor loadings were greater than .600 this
dimension was the most difficult to conceptualize
– A large number of items were discarded in the
first two stages when subsequent analysis
revealed the potential for significant confusion
– The remaining items can present some degree of
ambiguity
37. Item Analysis
• Epistemology
– The epistemology factor emphasized the
superiority of reason as a means of
interpreting reality and contained four items
• Three of the loadings exceeded .700
– Eight items did not survive the scrutiny of the
first two stages, including those juxtaposing
reason and revelation from a higher being
• Items referring to reason as the primary but not
only means of interpreting reality were also
rejected
38. Item Analysis
• Ethics
– The ethics factor emphasized self-interest and
contained five items
• Items in the scale emphasized a rational self-interest
– Strongly worded items did not survive the scrutiny
– The concept is frequently used interchangeably
with greed and complete ignorance of others,
Randian self-interest is an informed, rational
perspective
• As such, a self-interested person does not wish ill will
on others
39. Item Analysis
• Politics
– The politics factor emphasized capitalism—
most notably private property rights and free
enterprise—as the political system consistent
with objectivism and contained six items
– The remaining two dimensions -
Confucianism and Socialism each had two
items and it is expected that they would not
be stable with data from other cultures
40. Future Directions
• Is Rand’s conceptualization of objectivism—
including the four dimensions—the best
representation of the construct? The notion
of objectivism invokes a dispositional
perspective, assuming that an individual’s
approach to decision-making is relatively
stable. By definition, it eschews a situational
or adaptive perspective, insomuch that
objectivism rejects the idea that there are
multiple valid interpretations of reality.
