Dispositional explanation

• What are the characteristics of the Authoritarian Personality?

  • Extreme respect for authority
  • View society as ‘weaker’ than it once was
  • Contempt towards those of inferior social status
• Origin of the Authoritarian Personality

  Adorno believed that the Authoritarian Personality forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting. This parenting style typically features; expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and conditional love.
• What is meant by ‘scapegoating’?

  Adorno et al. argued that these childhood experiences create resentment and hostility in a child. But the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because they fear punishment. So their fears are displaced onto others who they perceive to be weaker, in a process known as scapegoating. This explains the hatred towards people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups, a central feature of obedience to a higher authority. This is a psychodynamic explanation.
• Adorno et al's research

  • 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups
  • Researchers developed the potential-for-fascism scale (F-scale)
  • The F-scale test had statements such as "Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn"
• Adorno et al's findings

  • They found that people with authoritarian leanings identified with 'strong' people and were generally contemptuous of the 'weak'. They were very conscious of their status and showed extreme respect for those of higher status
  • They also found that authoritarian people had a certain cognitive style (way of perceiving others) in which there was no 'fuzziness' between categories of people.
  • They had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.
  • They found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• Research support

  • Milgram and Elms interviewed a small sample of people who were fully obedient in the original obedience studies
  • They all completed F-scale tests and overall scored significantly higher than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants
  • Counterpoint - researchers found a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians. For example unlike authoritarians, Milgram's obedient participants generally did not glorify their fathers, did not experience unusual levels of punishment as a child etc
• Limited explanation

  • Authoritarianism cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country's population
  • For example, in pre-war Germany, millions displayed obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour
  • This was despite the fact they must have differed in personalities
  • It seems unlikely that they could all possess an Authoritarian Personality
  • An alternative view is that the majority of the German people identified with the ani-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the 'outgroup' of Jews, a SIT approach
• Political bias

  • The F-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology
  • Christie and Jahoda argued that the F-scale is a politically-based interpretation of the Authoritarian Personality
  • They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism such as Russian Bolshevism and Chinese Maoism
• Methodological problems

  • Acquiescence bias - respondents tend to agree with the viewpoint of whoever is asking the questions
  • This can be solved by mixing up questions and re-ordering scales
  • Childhood questions - Adorno already knew who had APs before he asked about childhood
  • Therefore he asked the questions in a way to get certain answers