Dispositional Explanation - The Authoritarian Personality

What were Adorno’s original ideas?

• Wanted to understand antisemitism in WW2

• Argues that high levels of obedient behaviour were dispositional, due to a set of internal traits, a personality type he called the Authoritarian personality

What is the Authoritarian Personality?

People that had their obedient personalities shaped early in life by strict authority based parenting with harsh physical punishments. Linking these ideas to Freud’s work, Adorno suggested that the anger they felt towards their parent was displaced onto others, mainly minority groups

What are some features of the Authoritarian Personality?

• High respect for people with high social status (leading to obedience)

• Hostile to people they see as having low status

• Fixed stereotypes about groups of people

• Conformists with conventional beliefs and behaviours

• Views on morality are dogmatic, having vey clear ideas about right or wrong (no grey areas)

How did Adorno (1950s) study the Authoritarian personality?

With a questionnaire called the F-scale (fascism scale). People who scored highly had fixed stereotypes, identified with ‘strong’ people, disliked ‘weak’ people and were inflexible with ideas of right and wrong

Questions on the F-Scale measured nine factors, including… (2)

Authoritarian submission → an uncritical attitude towards authority eg Q1 ‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’

Power and ‘toughness’ → preoccupation with dominance/submission and identification with power figures eg Q20 ‘people can be divided into two distinct classes; the weak and the strong’

AO3 - Adorno provides an explanation for Milgrams study results

In Milgrams study, a significant proportion, 35% resisted the authority figure; this cant be explained by situational factors alone, as each participant had precisely the same experience. However, Adorno’s theory acknowledges that the willingness to obey an authority figure can vary from person to person, offering an explanation as to why there are extreme variations in Milgram’s participants

AO3 - Elms and Milgram (1966)

20 obedient males who had given the highest levels of shock in previous Milgram studies and 20 defiant males who had refused were given the F scale. The obedient males scored significantly higher on the F scale, suggesting they had authoritarian personalities; they also tended to dehumanise or hold more negative attitudes towards the learner and see the experimenter as someone knowledgeable and trustworthy

AO3 - Adorno’s link between an abusive childhood and the development of the authoriatian personality can only be studied using correlation…

However, alternate situational explanations of obedience, such as the agentic state and legitimacy of authority, are backed up by significant experimental research. This research by Milgram, Bickman, Hofling and others shows the majority of people have the capacity to be highly obedient

AO3 - The F scale has been criticised due to acquiescence bias…

People tend to agree to questions, the F scale was written in a way that agreeing to all the questions would artificially inflate their score on the authoritarian scale leading to inaccurate measurement. Additionally, Adorno’s theory acknowledges was a left wing thinker, and some questions are argued to be biased against people with a right-wing political view

AO3 - The authoritarian personality can lead to stereotyping…

Relying solely on the authoritarian personality can lead to stereotyping, where complex historical events such as WW2 are overly simplified into personality flaws of the people involved. This approach risks reducing the accountability of social structures and leaders. It also ignores how societal norms, peer pressure and legal force can lead people with non-authoritarian personalities to feel they need to participate in widespread social obedience