Authoritarian Personality

• Obedience


  May be due to personality rather than situational factors
• People with a high External Locus of Control

  • More likely to follow orders
  • Take less personal responsibility
  • More affected by what others tell them
• People with a high Internal Locus of Control

  • More likely to be self-directed
  • Less likely to follow orders from an authoritative figure if they do not agree with them
• Authoritarian personality


  • Tends to show extreme respect for authority, status and hierarchies
  • Despises those they consider to be 'weak'
  • Has conventional attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race etc.
  • Is rigid in their beliefs
  • Is justice-focused
  • Is likely to have right-wing political views
• Authoritarian personality development

  Likely to be the result of harsh parenting in which discipline was a key feature and expectation of 'perfect' behaviour is common i.e. the child is shown love as long as they behave exactly how the parent wants them to behave
• Adorno et al.'s research

  1. Developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale (fascist scale) to test whether someone had an authoritarian personality

  2. Studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
• 1. Scale questions

  • Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn
  • Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished