Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

Aim of authoritarian study

Answer 1

Aimed to understand the anti-semitism of the holocaust

Question 2

Procedure and sample of authoritarian study

Answer 2

-Adorno developed several scales to investigate the unconscious attitudes of white Americans towards other racial groups including the F-scale
-sample: more than 2000 middle-class, white americans

Question 3

Example of question on F-scale

Answer 3

-obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn

Question 4

Findings of authoritarian study

Answer 4

-people with authoritarian leanings(high on F-scale) identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak, very conscious of their own and others status
-showed excessive respect to those of higher status
-had cognitive styles with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups, strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 5

Authoritarian characteristics

Answer 5

-especially obedient to authority
-extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it
-show contempt for those with perceived inferior social status
-highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender
-views society as becoming ruined so needing strong leaders to enforce traditional values
-inflexible in their outlook, everything either right or wrong

Question 6

Origins of authoritarian personality

Answer 6

-in childhood due to harsh parenting with strict discipline, parents show conditional love which depends on behaviour
-expectation of absolute loyalty towards parents

Question 7

Why does harsh parenting cause authoritarian personality

Answer 7

-these experiences create resentment in child which they cannot express directly against their parents due to a well-founded fear of reprisals
-means the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker so act as a scapegoat which explains dislike for people considered to be socially inferior

Question 8

Expand on strength that authoritarian personality has research support and however point

Answer 8

-Milgram conducted an interview with a small sample of obedient participants who scored highly on the F scale and found there might be a link between obedience and authoritarian personality-increases internal validity as similar results concluded in different study
H: merely a correlation, cannot draw causal conclusions as there may be a third factor involved eg both obedience and authoritarian personality may be associated with a lower level of education

Question 9

Expand on influence that dispositional factors are a limited explanation

Answer 9

-situational variables may have greater influence on obedience levels
-Milgram’s rigorous and controlled experiments have shown that obedience is affected by the situation in comparison to Adorno and the use of the F-scale milgrams results are more reliable and valid
-dispositional factors cannot account for all cases of obedience and may not be the only factors influencing obedience level

Question 10

Expand on weakness that there are methodological issues with the use of the F-scale to measure authoritarianism

Answer 10

-relies on self-report data which may be invalid due to social desirability bias
-result in false self-reporting as respondents may have changed their answers depending on how they wished to be perceived
-does not lead to accurate information about authoritarianism