Personality

• Authoritarian personality


  • Proposed by Theodor Adorno in 1950
  • Believed that a harsh style of parenting leads to personality traits like toughness, destructiveness, and cynicism
  • Measured using the F-Scale (fascist scale)
  • People with this personality are very submissive to authority but harsh on those they see as subordinate
  • More unconditional parenting leads to lower F-Scale scores and more resistance to destructive authority
• Internal locus of control

  • Rotter (1966)
  • People tend to take greater responsibility for their actions
  • They are less likely to obey orders
  • Experiment: High status experimenter told people to hold a live electric wire. Internals did not obey, while externals did.
• External locus of control

  • People are more likely to obey
  • They take less responsibility and feel what happens to them is governed by other people and chance factors
• Supporting evidence: Elms + Milgram (1966)

  • Used the F-scale with participants from Milgram's studies, 20 obedient and 20 not
  • Obedient participants scored higher on F-scale, and reported other characteristics of authoritarian personality.