AO1

• Authoritarian personality:

  • Adorno suggested obedience is dispositional (personality) not based on situational factors.
  • The dispositional explanation for obedience highlights the importance of the individual’s personality (i.e. their disposition). Authoritarianism is the belief that people must obey completely and not be allowed freedom to act as they wish.
  • Adorno believed that people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority, but also show contempt towards those they perceive as having inferior social status in the hierarchy.
• Authoritarian personality: (2)

  • They show highly conventional and conservative attitudes towards race, sex and gender. Authoritarian people are more obedient.
  • This obedience and respect to authority can be explained by their upbringing e.g. harsh parenting of impossibly high standards and severe criticism of failures. In other words, the parent(s) of an individual with an authoritarian personality would have shown conditional love during their childhood - the idea that they would only love the child if they behaved a certain way, or won a certain achievement.
• Authoritarian personality: (3)

  • Scapegoating is when the child’s fears are displaced onto someone else they believe is weaker, due to feeling resentment towards the parents.
  • Fascism is a far-right form of government in which the country’s power is held by one ruler or a small group. Fascist leaders rule as dictators, with unlimited power. They often use violence.
  • Adorno et al. (1950) developed a questionnaire - ‘F scale’ to measure levels of authoritarian personality e.g. “obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.” The F stands for “fascist.”