The Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

What is the definition and characteristics of an authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

Definition:
A psychological trait that describes people who are submissive to authority (can be developed from strict parenting and high standards)
Characteristics:
- Obedient to authority
- Intolerant of other beliefs
- Extremist
- Aggression towards other beliefs

Question 2

What are the factors affecting obedience?

Answer 2

• Situational: explanation that focuses on influences that stem from the environment a person is in
• Dispositional: explanation of individual behaviour caused by internal characteristics

Question 3

What was the aim of Adorno (1950)?

Answer 3

Investigated the causes of obedient personality

Question 4

What was Adorno’s procedure?

Answer 4

• His sample was 2000 white Americans and recorded their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
• Developed an Fascism scale to measure the relationship between personality and prejudice

Question 5

What were Adorno’s findings?

Answer 5

• Those who scored higher on the F-scale identified with the strong and disliked the weak
• They had a fixed and distinctive stereotypes of other groups
• There was a strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 6

What are the strengths and limits of Adorno (1950)?

Answer 6

Strengths;
- Those who were fully obedient in Milgram (1961) scored higher on test of authoritarianism
- There is abundant evidence that people who are more prejudiced have been raised as Adorno described
Limits:
- The sample is biased (Gender, Culture) meaning ungeneralisable
- Correlation does not equal causation