AQA A Level Psychology复习笔记1.2.3 Authoritarian Personality

• It is said that some people are more obedient than others and this is believed to be down to their personality
• This is down to their individual locus of control and whether they have an external or internal locus of control
• It is believed that those with a high External Locus of Control are more likely to follow orders as they take less personal responsibility and are more affected by what others tell them
• Whereas, those with a high Internal Locus of Control, are more likely to be self-directed and less like to follow orders from an authoritative figure if they do not agree with them

The authoritarian personality

• The authoritarian personality was first identified by Adorno et al. (1950) and refers to a person who has extreme respect for authority and is more likely to be obedient to those who hold power over them
• Adorno wanted to attempt to explain the behaviour of the Nazis and the level of anti-semitism and racism they displayed during the Second World War
• Adorno believed that some people were more likely to hold anti-semitic attitudes than others and those that did, would be the type of person who displayed the following characteristics:
  • Respect for authority figures
  • Rigid beliefs and attitudes
  • A strong belief in justice
  • Likely to follow Right-wing politics
  • Aggressive to those inferior to themselves
• Adorno believed the authoritarian personality forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting (extremely strict, highly disciplined, expectation of loyalty and impossibly high standards)
• Parents of these children only give conditional love; they only show the child love as long as they behave exactly how the parent wants them to

Adorno et al.'s research

Procedure

• Adorno developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale (fascists scale) to test whether someone had an authoritarian personality
• He studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
• Some examples from the F-Scale are:
  • Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn
  • There is hardly lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents
  • Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished
  • Nobody ever learned anything really important except through suffering

Findings

• Those who scored high on the F-Scale and identified as Authoritarian, identified with strong people and were genuinely contemptuous of those they deemed weak
• They were very conscious of status, and, if someone was of higher status than them, they showed them respect without question
• He also found authoritarian people had a certain cognitive style in which there was no blurring between categories of people
• Adorno found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Evaluation

Strengths

• Elms & Milgram interviewed a small sample of Milgram's original participants who had fully obeyed and found that when participants completed the F-Scale they scored significantly higher than those participants who had disobeyed
• This supports Adorno's view that obedient people have similar authoritarian personalities
  

Limitations

• Christie and Jahoda (1954) argued that the F-Scale is a politically biased, extreme right-wing interpretation of authoritarian personality
• They pointed out that extreme left-wing personalities also show high levels of authoritarianism and then evidence of this can be seen in the shape of Russian Bolshevism and Chinese Maoism
• Another limitation is that authoritarianism cannot explain why a majority population, such as Germany, would be obedient, post-war Germany, millions still displayed obedient, racist and fascist behaviour, despite the fact they must have differed in their individual personalities
• Finally, the evidence is flawed according to Greenstein (1969) who stated that it was possible to get a high score just by putting 'agree' as your answers
• This means anyone with a response bias, would be deemed as an authoritarian personality