Authoritarian personality

• Authoritarian personality


  A personality type characterized by a high degree of conformity to external authority, aggression towards out-groups, and a rigid adherence to conventional values
• Measuring authoritarian personality


  1. Using the F scale

  2. Developed by Adorno
• Adorno wanted to understand why there was so much anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in World War II
• Adorno's view on extreme obedience

  It must be a psychological disorder linked to aspects of personality
• Adorno's study of personality

  1. Sent questionnaires to over 2,000 Americans

  2. Developed the F scale to reveal unconscious feelings towards minority groups
• Factors on the F scale

  • Terror and aggression
  • Respect for high social status
  • Fixed negative stereotypes
  • Identification with strong people and dislike of weak
  • Inflexibility and clear ideas of right and wrong
• Adorno's explanation for authoritarian personality


  Shaped by strict authoritarian parenting with harsh physical punishments, anger displaced onto minority groups
• Milgram's research


  Supports Adorno's ideas - participants who followed orders fully scored higher on the F scale
• The Milgram finding is correlational, not causal
• Right-wing authoritarian (RWA) scale


  Developed later to measure authoritarian personality, fixed problems with Adorno's F scale and showed consistent correlation with prejudice
• The authoritarian personality idea can be criticized as a left-wing bias identifying conservatives as having a psychological disorder
• The original F scale had response bias issues with all questions written in one direction
• Some factors on the original F scale were not clearly linked to fascism, like exaggerated concern for sexual matters</b>