Authoritan personality

• Adorno felt that personality (dispositional) factors rather than situational (environment) factors could explain obedience.
• Proposed authoritan personality, a person who favours an authoritan social system and admires obedience to authority figures.
• The individual is hostile to those who are of inferior status, and obedient to people with a high status.
• The F scale is used to measure the authoritan personality, which is a personality test.
• • Evaluation- adorno found many significant correlations (authoritarianism correlated with prejudice to minority groups) so can’t say that one variable causes an other.
• • Evaluation- millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient behaviour but didn’t have the same personality, so unlikely that the majority of germanys population possessed an authoritan personality.
• • Evaluation - theory lacks internal validity as it assumes obedience is caused by dispositional explanations when it may be situational. may be better explanations like prejudice and submissiveness, could be caused by a poor standard of education as a child.