authoritarian personality Flashcards
what did adorno suggest prejudice is due to?
an individuals personality type
what are deep personality traits sensitive to?
predisposed deep personality traits in some people can be sensitive to totalitarian and antidemocratic ideas, so these people are more prone to prejudice
what does an authoritarian personality include?
- blind allegiance to conventional beliefs about right and wrong
- aggression to those who do not believe in conventional thinking
- belief in a black and white world
- need for strong leadership
- tend to have negative view of people in general
- resistant to creative and dangerous ideas
what did adorno create to test for an authoritarian personality?
f scale, questionnaire, showed if you were fascist
what are those with authoritarian personalities more likely to do?
categorise people into us and them, with their own group as superior
what type of people are more likely to develop this personality? why?
- individuals who had a strict upbringing with critical and harsh parents
- adorno believed this was due to these people not being able to express their hostility towards their parents so they displace it onto a safer target, which is usually a weaker ethnic minority group
what did the traits identified by the f scale show?
some people have a fascist characteristics such as ethnocentrism (favouring their own ethnic group) and conventionalism (suspicion of anyone else who is different from the majority)
strengths
Supporting study by Cohrs et al who looked at the
relationship between RWA (Right-wing
authoritarianism) and SDO (social dominance
orientation) and prejudice. They found that
RWA correlated with prejudice and that
openness to experience correlated negatively
with RWA. Therefore, showing that those with authoritarian personalities are less likely to go against conventional beliefs and are more prone to being prejudicial.
The theory uses empirical data, for example F-scale, which is a questionnaire of 30 items asking about obedience and respect for authority, aggression towards deviant groups and ethnocentrism. Therefore, it is an objective and scientific tool to measure personality type, increasing reliability and credibility of the theory.
weaknesses
Brown et al found that anti-semitism in Nazi Germany grew in a decade, which is a short amount of time for a whole generation of German families to adopt new child rearing practices that would lead to an increase in authoritarian and prejudiced children. Therefore, it doesn’t explain why prejudice increases in society so quickly in people who were did not originally have an authoritarian personality.
The theory is based on the research conducted using the F-scale. The sample for this research was very limited as it only consisted of white middle aged Californians. Therefore, the theory of authoritarian personalities may not be representative of the cause of prejudice in different cultures or socioeconomic groups, so it ethnocentric.
alternative theory
An alternative theory is RCT which suggests that competition over resources leads to prejudice. For example, sherif et al found when he made 2 groups of boys, that were matched to be the same, compete over a trophy it lead to the boys calling their own group favourable terms and the out-group terms like “sissies” and “stinkers”. Therefore, showing how AP may reductionist and may not be the sole cause of prejudice as the boys were matched to be the same.
application
High application as if we know the cause of prejudice is AP we can stop people from developing this type of personality. This can be done by encouraging parents to bring up their children in a less harsh manner, so they do not grow up resenting them and with the need to displace the behaviour onto those who haven’t done anything wrong. Therefore, decreasing discrimination against ethnic minorities.
