Authoritarian personality

• Authoritarian personality


  • High respect for those of higher social status, tendency to reject and punish those who violate conventional values
• Authoritarian personality


  Belief that people should completely obey or submit to their authority figures, and suppress their own beliefs
• Fixed cognitive style


  Tendency to adopt absolutist/'black and white' thinking and not challenge stereotypes
• Reaction formation


  When a child with harsh, disciplinarian parents displaces their anger onto seemingly 'inferior' others
• Adorno's psychodynamic theory


  A person's personality traits and attitudes as an adult stemmed from childhood influences such as that of one's parents
• Reaction formation


  The process where the child displaces their anger onto seemingly 'inferior' others
• Acquiescence bias


  Respondents always responding in the same way using the scales provided, regardless of the content shown in the scales
• The F-scale is particularly susceptible to acquiescence bias, suggesting that the findings produced by the F-scale may be lacking in validity and reliability
• Left-wing authoritarianism is also present, such as Bolshevism, and has been ignored by the current theory
• There are more similarities between the two ends of these spectrums than differences, most notably a large emphasis on utmost respect for legitimate authority
• Fascist-like views can be found across the whole spectrum, which the Authoritarian Personality does not account for
• The Authoritarian Personality has little ecological validity because it cannot explain many real-life examples of mass obedience
• It is very unlikely that the whole German population during Nazi occupation had an Authoritarian Personality, but rather many shared the same struggles in life and displaced their fear about the future onto a perceived 'inferior' group of people, through the process of scapegoating
• The Authoritarian Personality is a limited explanation for some examples of obedience
• Social-psychological Factors


  • Agentic State
  • Legitimacy of authority
  • Authoritarian Personality
• Authoritarian Personality- adorno et al 


  • A high level of obedience is pathological – wanted to understand the anti-Semitism of the Holocaust
  • Authoritarian personality includes extreme respect for authority & contempt for 'inferior'
  • Have conventional attitudes towards race & gender
• Authoritarian people


  Had a cognitive style where there was no 'fuzziness' between categories of people, with fixed, distinctive stereotypes about other groups
• The F-scale is politically biased

  It aims to measure tendency towards extreme right-wing ideology, but right & left-wing authoritarianism both insist on complete obedience to political authority
• Adorno's theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation of obedience because it doesn't explain obedience to left-wing authoritarianism
• Authoritarian personality development:


  • originates in childhood through harsh parenting (strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards & severe criticism) –
  • characterised by conditional love; parents' love depends on how the child behaves
  • Hostility towards/ fear of parents is displaced onto those who are socially inferior – scapegoating
• scapegoating 


  explains hatred of people seen as socially inferior, a psychodynamic explanation
• Briefly explain limitations of the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience


  • situational factors, e.g. proximity (Milgram), may have greater influence on obedience levels
  • explanation maybe flawed because it relies on self-report (F-scale)/questionnaire data - acquiescence bias
  • difficult establishing cause/effect between parenting style and obedience as it is based on retrospective data/level of education may determine authoritarianism and obedience
• Christe + jahoda - political scale


  The Authoritarian Personality may not be able to explain all cases of obedience across the whole political spectrum
• Adorno - correlation issues


  Adorno measured many variables & found significant correlations between them (e.g. authoritarianism correlates with prejudice against minority groups)

  Adorno could not claim that a harsh parenting style caused development of an authoritarian personality
• How do Social Identity Theory (SIT) and the Authoritarian Personality theory explain discrimination, particularly in the context of Nazi Germany?

  • SIT: value group membership and favor their in-group (e.g., Nazis) over out-groups (e.g., Jews), leading to prejudice and discrimination.
  • Authoritarian Personality: value group norms and authority figures (e.g., Nazi leaders) and exhibit hostility towards out-groups, projecting their need for order and control, contributing to extreme discrimination and atrocities.