Authoritarian personality

• What is the authoritarian personality?


  a personality that is disposed to favor obedience to authority and intolerance of outgroups and those lower in status. (Trump and his followers)
• Explain Adorno's study of the authoritarian personality


  He wanted to understand the holocaust, so he put forward a theory that obedience was a psychological disorder caused by harsh parenting. He developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale, the measure authoritarian personality.
• What are the authoritarian characteristics?


  Thinking in black and white - believing in traditional roles, racism and homophobia.
• What was the aim of Elms and milgrams evaluation?


  They used Milgrams experiemnt to see if obedient PPS were more likely to display authoritarian characteristics than disobedient pps.
• What did Elms and Milgram do?


  Used 20 obedient and 20 disobedient pps and got each of them to complete and F-scale.
• What did Elms and Milgram find?


  Obedient PPS of milgrams experiment scored higher of the F-scale and happened to have a less close relationship with their father growing up. Proving Adornos theory.
• What were the correlational issues with this?

  It is difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of obedience with the links between authoritarian personality and obedience. Because we cannot establish cause and effect due to confounding variables.
• What is education theory?


  Middendorp and Meleon (1990) found less educated people were more likely to display authoritarian characteristics than educated people. Suggesting obedience could be a result of education and not parenting.
• What were the alternative factors of authoritarian personality?


  Proximity, location, uniform, agentic state and legitimate authority are also explantions for obedience. Authoritarian personalities are rare and cannot be the only explanation for obedience.