The Authoritarian personality

Question 1

What is a Dispositional Explanation?

Answer 1

• Any explanation of behavior that highlights the importance of the individual’s personality.

Question 2

What is the Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 2

• A type of personality which explains that people obey people in authority.

Question 3

What type of explanation is the Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 3

• Dispositional

Question 4

Who created the Authoritarian Personality theory?

Answer 4

• Adorno

Question 5

Give two characteristics of the Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 5

• Tendency to be obedient to and show extreme respect toward people with authority.
• Hatred toward people they believe to be inferior.
• Traditional values toward Sex, Race, Gender.
• View society as going down hill and think society need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values.
• Their outlook is inflexible - they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Question 6

What did Adorno create to research into his theory?

Answer 6

• The F scale

Question 7

What is The F scale and explain how it works.

Answer 7

• The F stands for Fascist which is a dictator with complete power that people follow.
• The F scale ranges from high to low and if you score high it identifies with ‘strong’ people who are generally disrespectful and has a hatred for the ‘weak’.

Question 8

Who did Adorno investigate on?

Answer 8

• More than 2000 middle-class white Americans.

Question 9

What did Adorno find a correlation between?

Answer 9

• A strong positive correlation between authoritarian and prejudice.

Question 10

What are believed to be the origins of the Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 10

• Extreme strict discipline
• Expectation of complete loyalty
• Impossibly high standards
• Severe criticisms of perceived failures
• Conditional love

Question 11

What was believed about the effects of the origins of this personality?

Answer 11

• These experiences create resentment and hostility in a child.

Question 12

Give two criticism of Adorno’s research.

Answer 12

• Only investigated Americans, so can’t be generalized to the world - reduces validity.
• It is unlikely that all Germans who were obedient and anti-Semantic, had this personality. This is a limitation to Adorno’s theory because a alternative explanation is much more realistic.

Question 13

Summarise your AO1 knowledge into 6 points for a 16 marker.
What could you say?

Answer 13

• Define a dispositional explanation
• Define the Authoritarian personality
• Adorno’s research - 2000 middle class white Americans - the F scale
• Characteristics
• Origins