Dispositional Explanations

• A limitation of Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation is that the F-scale is politically biased.
• For example, Christie and Jahoda (1954) suggest the F-scale aims to measure tendency towards extreme right-wing ideology.
• However, right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism (e.g. Chinese Maoism) both insist on complete obedience to political authority.
• This weakens both the validity and support for Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation as it is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation of obedience to authority because it doesn't explain obedience to left-wing authoritarianism.
• Another limitation of Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation is that it is limited.
• For example, millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and anti-semitic behaviour, but didn't have the same personality.
• It seems unlikely the majority of Germany's population possessed an authoritarian personality.
• This weakens both the validity and support for Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation as an alternative explanation is more realistic; social identity theory. Most Germans identified with the anti-semitic Nazi state and adopted its views.
• A limitation of Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation is that it is based on a flawed methodology.
• For example, Greenstein (1969) suggests the F-scale is 'a comedy of methodological errors'; items are worded in the same 'direction' so the scale just measures the tendency to agree to everything.
• Also, researchers knew the participants' test scores when they interviewed them, so they knew who had authoritarian personalities. They also knew the study's hypothesis, which makes biased results likely.
• This weakens both the internal validity and support for Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation as it suggests that the data collected is meaningless.
• A further limitation of Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation is that much of the research uses correlations.
• For example, Adorno measured many variables and found significant correlations between them; authoritarianism correlated with prejudice against minority groups.
• However, no matter how strong a correlation between two variables is, it does not mean that one causes the other.
• This weakens both the internal validity and support for Adorno's authoritarian personality explanation as Adorno could not claim that harsh parenting style caused development of an authoritarian personality.