The Authoritarian Personality Flashcards
What is a dispositional explanation?
One that focuses on the individual’s own personal characteristics or traits (their disposition).
What is the authoritarian personality?
A personality type that is especially susceptible to obeying people in authority; they are hostile to people in inferior status but obedient to people in higher status.
How is it argued that an authoritarian personality forms?
Through strict and rigid parenting during childhood.
Who conducted research into the authoritarian personality?
Adorno et al.
What year did Adorno et al conduct their research?
1950.
What did Adorno et al aim to test?
If certain personality types make people more obedient.
What was the sample of Adorno’s study?
2000 middle-class Americans.
What did Adorno use to measure the samples Authoritarian Personality?
The Fascism Scale (F-Scale).
What were respondents asked about in the F-scale?
Their strength of agreement or disagreement on topics such as religion, ethnicity, politics, economics, and their moral values.
What happened to the highest-scoring participants?
They were further interviewed in more depth.
What did Adorno et al find?
That people with an authoritarian personality had fixed, stereotypical views about other groups and had no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people.
What were the people who scored highest on the F-scale like?
They identified with ‘strong’ people and disliked the weak; they were very conscious of their own and others’ status and showed excessive respect to those of higher status.
What was there a strong positive correlation between?
Authoritarianism and prejudice.
What did Adorno et al conclude?
That people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority because they believe we need strong leaders to enforce traditional values.
What are the 5 evaluation points for the authoritarian personality explanation?
+ Elms and Milgram (1966).
- Fails to explain obedience in the majority of a countries population (Nazi Germany).
- Cannot account for situational factors.
- Cannot establish cause and effect.
- Interviewers knew the hypothesis and the interviewee’s F-scale test scores.
