What is the Authoritarian Personality? - Adorno et al.

After world war 2, Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson and Sanford (1950) explore explanations of the extreme atrocities of the Nazi Regime. We look through their work, including a breakdown of the F Scale.

The Authoritarian Personality: After World War II, Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, and Sanford (1950) sought to understand the extreme atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. They proposed that right-wing extremism could be explained as a syndrome of the authoritarian personality. This landmark study in social and political psychology used a psychodynamic (Freudian) theory to explain the development of authoritarianism. They suggested that harsh, punitive parenting and rigid parental values create a tension between anxiety and fear of disapproval and punishment, leading to hostility and anger towards parents. This internal conflict results in the suppression of impulses, which are then displaced onto 'safer' or 'weaker' targets, such as ethnic minorities. This dynamic reflects the traits of authoritarian submission and aggression.

The F-Scale: As a result of their research, Adorno et al. constructed the California F-Scale, a measurement tool based on interviews to identify common patterns in attitudes, behaviors, and personal histories associated with authoritarianism. The F-Scale consists of several subscales, including conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, pre-occupation with power and toughness, destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and pre-occupation with sex. These subscales aim to capture different aspects of the authoritarian personality.

Problems with the F-Scale: Despite its significance, the F-Scale faced certain challenges. It suffered from acquiescence bias since all items were worded in the same direction, leading some individuals to agree with all items irrespective of content. Additionally, there was no strong empirical support for the existence of nine distinct factors, and studies using reversed items obtained low reliability coefficients.

Issues with the Theory: One major criticism of the theory is that it primarily focuses on right-wing authoritarianism and does not adequately address authoritarianism from other political perspectives. Furthermore, there was little empirical evidence to support the Freudian and psychodynamic theoretical assumptions on which the theory was based.
In conclusion, the concept of the authoritarian personality has been instrumental in understanding right-wing extremism and authoritarian traits. However, the F-Scale faced challenges in its construction and validity, and the theory itself received criticism for its limited scope and lack of empirical support for certain assumptions. Despite these issues, the study of authoritarianism remains a significant area of research in political psychology.

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