Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

What did Adorno argue?

Answer 1

That some people form personalities that make them more obedient than others due to their early childhood experiences.

Question 2

What did Adorno find out about students and obedience?

Answer 2

Students who had harsh, critical and strict parenting and physical punishments in the first few years of life were obedient as adults.

Question 3

Although children felt angry about this, why could they not take this hostility out on their parents?

Answer 3

It was not acceptable to do so. As a result, these children grew up to be submissive and obedient towards authority figures.

Question 4

What is the Key Study?

Answer 4

Adorno

Question 5

What did Adorno’s study investigate?

Answer 5

The unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups of more than 2000 middle class white Americans.

Question 6

What was Adorno’s procedure?

Answer 6

Several scales were developed, including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale).

Question 7

What were Adorno’s findings?

Answer 7

Authoritarians (who score high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous of the ‘weak’. they were conscious of their own and others’ status

Question 8

What was the authoritarian cognitive style?

Answer 8

There was no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people, with foxed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.

Question 9

What did Adorno find a correlation between and what type of correlation was it?

Answer 9

A strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Question 10

What was the F-scale designed for?

Answer 10

Historically and Problematic test was designed in order to measure authoritarian and fascist tendencies in the general population.

Question 11

What did the authors of the F-scale test base it on and what did they try to demonstrate?

Answer 11

Based on extensive empirical research and tried to demonstrate that some people are more prejudiced and intolerant than other and that these tendencies could lead to authoritarian and possibly fascist beliefs.

Question 12

What did Adorno believe about a high level of obedience?

Answer 12

It is pathological.

Question 13

What did Adorno want to understand?

Answer 13

The antisemitism of the Holocaust. They believed that questioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find it causes in the individuals personality.

Question 14

What does the Authoritarian Personality include and what did Adorno conclude about it?

Answer 14

-Includes extreme respect for authority and contempt for ‘inferiors’.
-He concluded that people with AP are especially obedient to authority, they have exaggerated respect for authority and submissive to it.

Question 15

Where does Authoritarian Personality originate from?

Answer 15

In childhood-links to overly strict parents.

Question 16

Examples of Harsh Parenting…

Answer 16

-Extremely strict discipline
-Expectation of absolute loyalty
-Impossibly high standards and sever criticism.

Question 17

What is Authoritarian Personality also characterised by?

Answer 17

Conditional Love-parents love also depends entirely on how their child behaves.

Question 18

What is a key explanation for AP relating to parents?

Answer 18

Hostility towards/fear if parent is displaced into those who are socially inferior.

Question 19

What do these experiences create?

Answer 19

Create resentment and hostility in the child but they cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because they fear reprisals.

Question 20

How are these feelings displaced and what is this called?

Answer 20

Are displaced onto other who as seen as weaker-known as scapegoating.

Question 21

What does scapegoating explain and what type of explanation is it?

Answer 21

The hatred of people seen as socially inferior, a psychodynamic explanation.

Question 22

Why did Adorno develop the F-scale?

Answer 22

To measure people’s attitudes and behaviours. People who score highly on this scale are said to have the AP and some research has found these people to be very obedient.

Question 23

What did Adorno find a correlation between?

Answer 23

Personality type and obedience. This means that he could prove that the AP causes high levels of obedience.

Question 24

The participants in Milgram’s study. Did they fit Adorno’s expectations?

Answer 24

Some of the most obedient in his study did not experience the authoritarian upbringing predicted by Adorno.

Question 25

What is a key link between AP and obedience with Elms and Milgram?

Answer 25

Elms and Milgram interviewed fully obedient pps who all scored highly on the F-scale.

Question 26

Why can we not conclude from this that AP causes obedience?

Answer 26

It’s just a correlation between measured variables.

Question 27

What is the potential 3rd factor which could be involved?

Answer 27

Both obedience and AP may be caused by a lower level of education.

Question 28

Authoritarian Personality is limited. Give an example of this.

Answer 28

Millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and antisemitic behaviour-but didn’t have the same personality.
-It is unlikely that the majority of Germany’s population possessed an AP.

Question 29

An alternative explanation is more realistic-explain this.

Answer 29

Social Identity Theory
Most Germans identified with antisemitic Nazi stat and adopted his views. Therefore Adorno’s Theory is limited.

Question 30

A further limitation of Adorno

Answer 30

-He measured many variables and found significant correlations between them.
-No matter how strong a correlation between two variables is, it doesn’t mean that one causes the other.
-Adorno couldn’t claim that harsh parenting styles caused development of and AP.