Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

Dispositional explanation

Answer 1

Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality

Question 2

Authoritarian personality

Answer 2

A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. These people are thoughts to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive to inferiors

Question 3

Scapegoating

Answer 3

Displacing fears onto others who are perceived to be weaker

Question 4

Adorno. Et al (1950)

Answer 4

He studied more than 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitude towards other ethnic groups
He developed the F-scale

Question 5

Cognitive style

Answer 5

Way of percieving others

Question 6

What did Adorno want to understand?

Answer 6

Anti-semitism of the holocaust

Question 7

Adorno et al theory

Answer 7

• he argued that people with an authoritarian personality:
  
  • show an extreme respect for and submissiveness to authority
  • they view society as weaker than it once was, and need strong powerful leaders to enforce traditional values
  • these characteristics make people with an authoritarian personality more likely to obey authority

Question 8

Authoritarian outlook of the world

Answer 8

Everything is either right or wrong
Uncomfortable with uncertainty
People who are other are responsible for the problems in society

Question 9

Psychodynamic explanation

Answer 9

• develops in childhood
• mainly due to harsh parenting
  
  • extremely strict discipline
  • expectations of loyalty
  • impossibly high standards
  • severe criticism
• this creates resentment and hostility in a child
• the child cannot express these feelings because they fear punishment
• their fears are displaced onto others they perceive to be weaker

Question 10

Conditional parental love

Answer 10

Their love and affection of their child depends on how they behave

Question 11

How do authoritarian personalities form?

Answer 11

The psychodynamic approach

Question 12

F-scale

Answer 12

Potential for fascism scale

• still used to measure authoritarian personality
• e.g. ‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’

Question 13

Adorno et al findings

Answer 13

• people with authoria=Tarzan leanings identified with strong people and were intolerant of the weak
• very conscious of status
• showed extreme respect for those of higher status
• had a certain cognitive style
  
  • black and white thinking - clear categories with no overlapping
• had fixed distinctive stereotypes of other groups
• there was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 14

Strength of authoritarian personality

Answer 14

• there is evidence from milgram supporting it
• Milgram and Elm interviewed a small sample of people from the original obedient studies and with 30 obedient
• They completed the F-scale as part of the interview
• The 20 obedient participants scored significantly higher on the F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient in participants
• the two groups were very different in terms of authoritarianism

Question 15

Limitations of authoritarian personality

Answer 15

• The link between authoritarian personalities and obedient people maybe week
• Obedient personalities in milligrams study has a number of characteristics that white unusual for authoritarians
• unlike authoritarian, the obedient participants did not:
  
  • glorify their fathers
  • experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood
  • have hostile attitudes towards their mothers
• The link between obedience and authoritarianism is complexed.
• Obedient participants were unlike authoritarians in many ways so authoritarianism is unlikely to be useful predictor obedience

Question 16

Another limitation of the authoritarian personality

Answer 16

• There were methodological problems
• The interviewers may have had interview bias, as the interview knew the hypothesis of the study
• they also knew that participants test scores which would have affected the questions,
• they may also have only recorded the information needed to confirm the hypothesis

Question 17

A 3rd limitation of authoritarian personality

Answer 17

Authoritarianism cannot explain obedience in the majority of the country‘s population

• e.g. in pre-war Germany millions of people showed obedient and anti-somatic behaviour
• but they would have had a different personalities
• it is very unlikely they would or possess an authoritarian personality
• the majority of German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state
• this is a social identity theory approach
• Therefore Adorno’s theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic

Question 18

Limitation of the F-scale

Answer 18

It’s only measures the unconscious tendency towards extreme forms of right-wing ideology

Question 19

Richard Christie and Marie jahoda

Answer 19

• They argued that the F scale is a politically biased interpretation of the authoritarian personality
• this means that I don’t know is theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation for obedience to authority in different political views

Question 20

Greenstein

Answer 20

He calls the F-scale

• ‘a comedy of methodological errors’
• because it is a very flawed scale

Question 21

Displacement

Answer 21

A psychology defence mechanism or a person redirects the negative emotions from the original source to a less threatening person/object

Question 22

Fascist

Answer 22

Someone who believes in a totalitarian state ruled by a supreme leader or dictator who controls everything possible and treats people harshly