a person who has extreme respect and obedience for high authority figures and people with power over them. it forms in childhood (psychodynamic) mostly in harsh, strict parenting, high standards. they view society as 'weaker' and have an inflexible outlook of the world. uncomfortable with uncertainty, nothing is 'grey' everything is either right or wrong.
who identified the authoritarian personality?
adorno et al (1950). he believed obedience was a psychological disorder.
what was adorno et al's research?
he studied 2000+ middle-class white male americans, and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups. he used the F-Scale, and found that obedience respect are the most important things a child can learn. people with higher F-Scale scores can be identified with 'strong people'. they are very conscious of their status and showed extreme values to those of higher status.
research to support adorno et al?
milgram supports authoritarian personality, 20 obedient people scored higher on f-scale than 20 disobedient people.
good generalisability, can be shown in real life such as: abu ghraib, mai lai massacre, WW2.
criticisms against adorno et al?
the obedient participants had several unusual characteristics for authoritarians such as, they didn't glorify their fathers, no unusual punishment as a child and no hostile attitudes towards their mothers.
the link between obedience and authoritarian is complex. low population validity. all biases (gender, race,etc).
