ADORNO -- authoritarian personality Flashcards
How does someone form an authoritarian personality. What was the origin?
*formed in childhood
- result of strict/harsh parenting and discipline
AS A RESULT…
this creates resentment and hostility, which is displaced into those who are viewed as ‘weaker’
(scapegoating.)
What is an authoritarian personality and what are their characteristics?
*individuals open to obeying people in authority.
- submissive to those of higher status
*dismissive to inferior
*view society as weaker
*believe we need strong powerful leaders to enforce traditional values
What was Adornos procedure to measure obedient personality’s and their unconscious attitudes to racial groups?
*2000 middle class, white americans.
*used a potential for facism scale (F.scale)
“To what extent do you agree?”
What were Adornos findings from his study?
*Those who identified high on the F.scale identified with strong people and were hateful to weak.
*They were conscious of thier own actions and aware of others’ status’ =respect
*There were no fuzziness between categories of people with fixed and clear stereotypes of others.
*strong correlation with authoritiveness, and prejudice.
AO3: Research support.
“Participants that obeyed in Milgrams study were called to complete the F.scale and scored higher than those participants who had disobeyed in Milgrams study.”
What does this therefore show?
This therefore shows that there is a LINK between obedience and an authoritarian personality (High score on F.Scale) as those who are authoritarian are more obedient.
However some of these authoritarian participants dont show the expected characteristics (e.g. glorifying their parents) This shows that the link between obediance and auth. is more complex than we first thought.
AO3: Limited explanation.
“A problem with this theory is that it cant explain obedience on a large scale. E.g. majority of a country like pre-war Germany where millions displayed obedience.”
“Why would this be difficult to explain from the perspective of an auth. personality?”
difficult to explain from an auth. perspective as it’s UNLIKELY that the whole population would have an auth. personality.
It’s MORE likely that they would have different personality characterstics.
Therefore it’s UNLIKELY that it was an auth. personality which led to ALL of their obedience.
AO3: Reductionist approach.
“Problem with dispositional explanation of obedience such as the auth. personality is that it is reductionist. it only looks at the personality as a cause of obediance, meaning it does not consider other environmental factors which may have lead to obediance such as…?”
Location, proximity, agentic state, uniform, legitimacy of auth.
Therefore…
Theories should not be looked at in isolation, but instead an INTERACTIONIST approach should be applied, where many theories are considered alongside each other.
AO3: Flawed evidence/biased samples.
“One problem is that the research has acquiescence bias, as all of the items on the F.scale are in the same direction. therefore it’s possible to get a high score just by ticking the same box.”
“Why is this an issue?”
This is an issue as therefore, we may just be measuring the TENDANCY to agree with everything, rather than TRULY measuring the auth. personality.
Therefore, any CONCLUSIONS made with regards to auth. personality being more obedient may not be accurate and we could be making false conclusions.
