''The Authoritarian Personality'' is a 1950
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
book by
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
,
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik (August 18, 1908 in Lemberg – March 31, 1958 in Berkeley, California, USA) was a Polish-Austrian Jewish psychologist. She was forced to leave Poland and later Austria as a result of anti-Jewish persecution. She is bes ...
,
Daniel Levinson
Daniel J. Levinson (May 28, 1920 – April 12, 1994), a psychologist, was one of the founders of the field of positive adult development. Levinson is most well known for his theory of stage-crisis view, however he also made major contributions ...
, and
Nevitt Sanford
Nevitt Sanford (1909–1995) was an American professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Stanford University. A Harvard doctoral student of Gordon Allport, PhD in social psychology and Henry Murray, MD at the ...
, researchers working at the
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
, during and shortly after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
''The Authoritarian Personality'' "invented a set of criteria by which to define personality traits, ranked these traits and their intensity in any given person on what it called the '
F scale' (F for
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
)."
[Codevilla, Angelo (16 July 2010]
America's Ruling Class
, ''The American Spectator
''The American Spectator'' is a conservative American magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. It was founded in 1967 by Tyrrell, who remains its editor- ...
'' The personality type Adorno et al. identified can be defined by nine traits that were believed to cluster together as the result of childhood experiences. These traits include conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception,
superstition
A superstition is any belief or practice considered by non-practitioners to be irrational or supernatural, attributed to fate or magic, perceived supernatural influence, or fear of that which is unknown. It is commonly applied to beliefs and ...
and
stereotypy
A stereotypy (, or ) is a repetitive or ritualistic movement, posture, or utterance. Stereotypies may be simple movements such as body rocking, or complex, such as self-caressing, crossing and uncrossing of legs, and marching in place. They are ...
, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.
Though criticized at the time for bias and methodology, the book was highly influential in American social sciences, particularly in the first decade after its publication: "No volume published since the war in the field of social psychology has had a greater impact on the direction of the actual empirical work being carried on in the universities today."
Institutional context
The impetus of ''The Authoritarian Personality'' was the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...
, the attempted genocidal extinction of European
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
by
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
's
National Socialist
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
party. Adorno had been a member of the "
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
", a group of philosophers and Marxist theorists who fled Germany when Hitler shut down their
Institute for Social Research
The Institute for Social Research (german: Institut für Sozialforschung, IfS) is a research organization for sociology and continental philosophy, best known as the institutional home of the Frankfurt School and critical theory. Currently a part ...
. Adorno et al. were thus motivated by a desire to identify and measure factors that were believed to contribute to antisemitic and fascist traits. The book was part of a "Studies in Prejudice" series sponsored by the
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish org ...
's Department of Scientific Research.
Sources and influences
''The Authoritarian Personality'' was based in part on earlier Frankfurt School analyses undertaken in Germany, but with a few key changes. First, their Marxist and radical roots were downplayed. For example, the earlier "authoritarian personality/revolutionary personality" axis was changed to an "authoritarian personality/democratic personality" axis in America. Thus, values and behaviors earlier associated with revolutionary Marxism were now associated with support for
democracy
Democracy (From grc, δημοκρατία, dēmokratía, ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation (" direct democracy"), or to choose gov ...
. Second, the book abandoned and/or modified traditional Marxist sociological and economic explanations for human behavior in favor of psychological explanations, earning scorn from more orthodox Marxists.
Generally, Adorno et al. took an
antipositivist
In social science, antipositivism (also interpretivism, negativism or antinaturalism) is a theoretical stance that proposes that the social realm cannot be studied with the methods of investigation utilized within the natural sciences, and tha ...
position; More generally, the Frankfurt School has been critical of
reductionism
Reductionism is any of several related philosophical ideas regarding the associations between phenomena which can be described in terms of other simpler or more fundamental phenomena. It is also described as an intellectual and philosophical pos ...
and the
third-person perspective
Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the a ...
in the social sciences. Instead, it recognizes that
social science research is inevitably value-laden, which calls for a model of
scientist who is a self-reflective interpreter, rather than a technical
problem-solver. Furthermore, it assigns a practical purpose in social science.
Following a Marxist tradition, it requires that theories in social
science should not only describe and explain the social world, but also should
serve a human emancipation agenda in all circumstances of oppression and
dominance. This is a different approach in
philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ultim ...
than
falsification, more popular in the natural sciences.
Content
A central idea of ''The Authoritarian Personality'' is that authoritarianism is the result of a
Freudian
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts i ...
developmental model. Excessively harsh and punitive parenting was posited to cause children to feel immense anger towards their parents; yet fear of parental disapproval or punishment caused people to not directly confront their parents, but rather to identify with and idolize authority figures. Moreover, the book suggested that authoritarianism was rooted in suppressed
homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to peop ...
, which was redirected into outward hostility towards the father, which was, in turn, suppressed for fear of being infantilized and castrated by the father.
This hypothesis was consistent with prevailing psychological theories of the time, and Frenkel-Brunswik reported some preliminary support, but empirical data have generally not confirmed this prediction. Authoritarianism was measured by the
F-scale. The "F" was short for "pre-fascist personality." Another major hypothesis of the book is that the authoritarian syndrome is predisposed to
right-wing
Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authorit ...
ideology and therefore receptive to
fascist
Fascism is a far-right, Authoritarianism, authoritarian, ultranationalism, ultra-nationalist political Political ideology, ideology and Political movement, movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and pol ...
governments.
Methodology
The study employs both quantitative and qualitative components. The first part
of the research resembles a survey type of research with structured
questionnaires. Based on the scores on the questionnaires, a smaller number of
participants was elected for
clinical interviews
Clinical may refer to: Healthcare
* Of or about a clinic, a healthcare facility
* Of or about the practice of medicine Other uses
* Clinical (film), ''Clinical'' (film), a 2017 American horror thriller
See also
*
*
* Clinical chemistry, the an ...
and administration of the
Thematic Apperception Test
Thematic apperception test (TAT) is a projective psychological test developed during the 1930s by Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard University. Proponents of the technique assert that subjects' responses, in the narratives they ...
. Interviews were coded with the techniques of
content analysis
Content analysis is the study of documents and communication artifacts, which might be texts of various formats, pictures, audio or video. Social scientists use content analysis to examine patterns in communication in a replicable and systematic ...
.
Sample
"The majority of the subjects could be characterized as white, non-Jewish,
native-born, middle-class Americans and the authors guessed that their findings
would hold for this population"
''
ritique point': The individuals were sampled from formal organizations. There
are reasons to believe that there are systematic differences between such a
sample and the aforementioned population (see section Overall Criticism).
Response format
Likert type items ranging from −3 to +3 without a middle point.
Psychometric scales
* Anti-Semitism Scale
* Ethnocentrism Scale
* Political & Economical Conservatism Scale
Anti-Semitism scale
This is a listing of the content categories featured in the items. These traits
are attributed to
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
people.
* ''Offensive'' (conceited, sensual, dirty)
* ''Threatening'' (ruthless, competitive, radical)
* ''Attitudes'' (discriminative action to be taken)
* ''Seclusive'' (clannish, keeping apart from gentiles)
* ''Intrusive'' (desire to intrude where not welcome)
All items were phrased in affirmation of the Anti-Semitic sentiment. Brown (2004, p. 48),
together with many others, criticizes this choice as "unwise".
The items were phrased in a superficially moderate language, which nonetheless
conveyed the saliency of Jews to the respondent and a negative sentiment towards
them
Ethnocentrism
Split-half reliability for the scale was .91 (high). The correlation between
''Ethnocentrism'' and ''Anti-Semitism'' scales was .80 (relatively high). This
result is "evidence that antagonism to the culturally unlike is a generalized
sentiment"
Political and economical conservatism
Split-half reliability for PEC scale was .73 (moderate). The scale's correlation
with A-S and E was not strong, but in none of the groups was it negative. "
..neither ethnocentrism nor Anti-Semitism ever showed a tendency to go with
leftist liberal views."
F Scale
The F scale targets an authoritarian, anti-democratic personality profile that makes a person susceptible to Fascist propaganda. The items were written in accordance to fascist propaganda materials as well as ''priory held'' TAT protocol data and interviews with ethnocentric participants.
* ''Conventionalism'': Adherence to conventional values.
* ''Authoritarian Submission'': Towards
ingroup
In sociology and social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group with which an individual does not identify. People may for example ide ...
authority figures.
* ''Authoritarian Aggression'': Against people who violate conventional values.
* ''Anti-Intraception'': Opposition to subjectivity and imagination.
* ''Superstition and Stereotypy'': Belief in individual fate; thinking in rigid categories.
* ''Power and Toughness'': Concerned with submission and domination; assertion of strength.
* ''Destructiveness and Cynicism'': hostility against human nature.
* ''Projectivity'': Perception of the world as dangerous; tendency to project unconscious impulses.
* ''Sex'': Overly concerned with modern sexual practices.
Across various participant groups, the average
item-total correlation The item-total correlation test arises in psychometrics in contexts where a number of tests or questions are given to an individual and where the problem is to construct a useful single quantity for each individual that can be used to compare that i ...
was 0.33. Subsequent factor analysis confirmed a one-dimensional structure of these content subsets of items (Eysenck 1954, p 152, ref by Brown, p. 53). The first form of the F-Scale correlated 0.53 with A-S, 0.65 to E and 0.54 to PEC. The scale was revised by dropping items with low item-total correlations and/or low predictive value of A-S and E scores. The revised form correlated by 0.75 to a combined A-S/E scale, and 0.57 to PEC. Ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism and potentiality for fascism were inter-related to each other, as well as to conservatism, although not as prominently.
Correlations with IQ, SES, and education
Ethnocentrism is negatively correlated with both IQ and years of education. Subsequent analyses by Christie showed that education is the mediating factor in this set of relationships. Intelligence is not as strongly correlated to E ''per se'' if years of education are partialed out, the partial correlation being as small as -.20. Christie also estimated the expected correlation between "either IQ and F scores or years of education and F scores for a representative cross-sectional sample, range between -.50 and -.60".
Clinical and projective data
Interviews
The interviewers were instructed to obtain information of the following areas.
There were more specific instructions and points of emphasis within each of
these areas.
* Vocation
* Income
* Religion
* Clinical Data
** Family Background: Sociological Aspects
** Family Figures: Personal Aspects
** Childhood
** Sex
** Social Relationships
** School
* Politics
* Minorities and Race
ritique PointInterviewers (but not coders) were aware of the participants
responses and were instructed to study them before interview. This choice was
also "severely criticized"
"In considerable degree,
.. the projective data confirm the covariation of
implicit antidemocratic trends with prejudice which was demonstrated by the
questionnaire data".
Construction of personality
* Self Glorification ''vs'' Objective Self Appraisal
* Conventional Idealization of Parents ''vs'' Objective Appraisal
* Family status-concerned ''vs'' Family status-relaxed
Additional: Coping with Ambivalence about Self and Others, Lack of acceptance
of aggressive feelings towards the parents, Projection of sexual and aggressive
impulses to minorities, and its psychological function. "Repression of impulses
leads to projection which functions as rationalization for an expression.'
ritique Point Coding and Interpretation is informed by psychoanalytic
theory.
Cognitive style
* Rigidity ''vs'' Flexibility
* Intolerance of Ambiguity ''vs'' Tolerance of Ambiguity
(see
Jaensch's Typology)
ritique PointDue to the coders having access to the protocols, the
dependency between prejudice and rigidity may be biased.
Overall criticism
Sampling
Participants were recruited through formal organizations. Christie reports
though that people belonging to at least one organization differ significantly
from people that do not belong to organizations at all. Thus the sample taken
was not representative of white, non-Jewish, middle-class, Americans. The
correlations between A-S, E and F vary in different samples, subsequent studies
showed. However, a negative correlation was never found between those scales.
Acquiescence Response Set
Couch and Keniston (1960) addressed the problem of the items being all phrased in an affirmative direction towards anti-Semitism.
In a large number of psychometric instruments, they showed that the tendency to respond affirmatively (Yeasayers) or negatively (Naysayers) is a relevant psychological factor despite the content of specific questionnaires.
It is now accepted that a greater proportion of variance can be attributed to
individual response patterns rather than the targeted Anti-Semitic attitude.
This poses a
validity
Validity or Valid may refer to:
Science/mathematics/statistics:
* Validity (logic), a property of a logical argument
* Scientific:
** Internal validity, the validity of causal inferences within scientific studies, usually based on experiments
** ...
problem: The scale may not accurately record the
variable it is intended to measure.
Bass found a .20 correlation between F-scale and an item-by-item reversed version.
(expected correlation if the phrasing played no role would be −1.00)
Christie used more elaborate reversal of items accounting for linguistic and
psychological subtleties preserving the original rationale of the items
preparation.
See section on Overall Criticism.
Criticisms of content analyses
* Interviewer Knowledge of Questionnaire Responses
* Examination of Data in Advance of Coding
* Coding Multiple Variables from the Same Content
* Reporting Inter-rater Reliability for Too General Coding Categories
Explanation in terms of socio-economic status (SES) rather than repression
"We can easily imagine plausible reasons for the association of each
authoritarian trait with the cluster that includes low IQ, little education, and
low SES and so the explanation of covariation among the traits is simply their
several particular ties to the same underlying factors.
..However]
..Norms are not put together at random or incidentally. When they stabilize into a
particular combination it must be because that is a combination that works for
human personalities" (Brown, p. 75)
Left wing authoritarianism
A number of studies have examined the
Validity (psychometrics), external
criterion validity of F scale, with various demographic and political groups.
Such groups included: German cosmetic factory workers (Cohn and Carsch, 1954);
English fascists and communists, compared to 'politically neutral' soldiers
(Coulter, 1953). Both studies found high scores (>5) in F-Scale.
However, the Coulter study also found the Communists scored higher in F-Scale than
the politically neutral group. Eysenck (1954, ref. by Brown, p. 80) commented that Coulter's results indicate
that the F-Scale actually measures general authoritarianism, rather than
fascist tendencies in particular. (see
Left-Wing Authoritarianism)
Christie (1956) attributed Coulter's findings to sampling fluctuation, pointing
out the politically neutral group was unusually low in F-Scale, compared to
50 known group means at the time. Rokeach (1960) obtained F-Scale scores from 13
Communist college students in England. Their mean was the lowest of all known
groups.
Brown, (2004, p. 80) states: "... the Berkeley researchers seem to have been correct in their belief that the
F-Scale is a measure of fascism."
Authors and conflicts
Sanford and Levinson were both psychology professors at Berkeley. They did much of the preliminary work on ethnocentrism and statistical measurement. Frenkel-Brunswik examined personality variables and family background with a series of interview studies. Adorno provided a political and sociological perspective to the book. Although Adorno's name heads the alphabetical list of authors, he arrived late to the project and made a relatively small contribution. Adorno, in a 1947 letter to Horkheimer, said that his main contribution was the F-scale, which in the end was the "core of the whole thing."
An agreement among the authors held that each one was to sign the individual chapters to which he or she had contributed, and that all four were to sign the chapter on the F-scale;
[Wiggershaus, Rolf (1995]
''The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance''
p.411 Adorno was credited in 5 of the 23 chapters.
The initially planned title for the book was ''The Fascist Character and the Measurement of Fascist Trends'', but as early as 1947 Adorno feared that the assistants at Berkeley would try to sanitize it to a more innocuous title like ''Character and Prejudice''. The final title was the result of a compromise.
Responses
''The Authoritarian Personality'' inspired extensive research in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
,
sociology
Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of Empirical ...
, and
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
during the 1950s and early 1960s on the relation between personality traits, behavior, and political beliefs. ''The Authoritarian Personality'' has often provoked polarized responses: "The Berkeley study of authoritarian personality does not leave many people indifferent".
The study "has been subjected to considerable criticism" since the 1950s, particularly for various methodological flaws, including
sample bias
In statistics, sampling bias is a bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others. It results in a biased sample of a population (or non-human fa ...
and poor
psychometric
Psychometrics is a field of study within psychology concerned with the theory and technique of measurement. Psychometrics generally refers to specialized fields within psychology and education devoted to testing, measurement, assessment, and ...
techniques.
In 1973, Gaensslen et al. found that, contrary to predictions by Adorno et al., rigidity/dogmatism is not intrinsically maladaptive; e.g., rigidity can be associated with discipline and
productivity
Productivity is the efficiency of production of goods or services expressed by some measure. Measurements of productivity are often expressed as a ratio of an aggregate output to a single input or an aggregate input used in a production proces ...
.
In 1980, sociologist
J.J. Ray argued that the project of ''The Authoritarian Personality'' was seriously flawed on several points: for not asking questions regarding
libertarian
Libertarianism (from french: libertaire, "libertarian"; from la, libertas, "freedom") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as a core value. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and political freedom, and minimize the state's e ...
politics (which according to Ray are typically more anti-authoritarian than right- or left-wing politics); for failing to demonstrate that authoritarian/right-wing beliefs are correlated with
psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of abnormal cognition, behaviour, and experiences which differs according to social norms and rests upon a number of constructs that are deemed to be the social norm at any particular era.
Biological psychopatholo ...
; and, most importantly, for failing to demonstrate that authoritarian beliefs are associated with authoritarian behavior. In 1993, over a decade later, the latter point was also criticized by Billings et al.
The book concludes that right-wing, authoritarian governments produce hostility towards racial, religious, or ethnic minorities. Psychologist
Bob Altemeyer
Robert Anthony Altemeyer (born 6 June 1940) is a retired Professor of Psychology at the University of Manitoba. Altemeyer also produced the right-wing authoritarianism scale, or RWA Scale, as well as the related left-wing authoritarianism scale, ...
argued against that conclusion, saying that Fascist Italy was not characterized by antisemitism, and that Jews occupied high positions in Mussolini's government until pressure from Hitler disenfranchised these Jews.
Rubenstein's research in Israel revealed that Orthodox Jews scored higher on right wing politics and authoritarianism as traits than Reform Jews, and that both groups scored higher than Secular Jews. However, it cannot be said that there is no relationship between traits of Right-Wing Authoritarians and antisemitism. In fact, Adorno's nine traits of the "F scale" are rather general and have been thought to identify fascist as well as anti-Semitic individual attributes. The fact that Rubenstein himself affirms that "the results confirm the validity of the RWA" represents a particularly interesting outcome: Orthodox and Reform Jews in Israel are classified closer to the fascist and anti-Semitic traits, as thought in 1950 by Adorno et al., compared to Secular Jews in Israel.
Some observers have criticized what they saw as a strongly politicized agenda to ''The Authoritarian Personality''. Conservative social critic
Christopher Lasch
Robert Christopher Lasch (June 1, 1932 – February 14, 1994) was an American historian, moralist and social critic who was a history professor at the University of Rochester. He sought to use history to demonstrate what he saw as the pervasiven ...
argued that by equating mental health with left-wing politics and associating right-wing politics with an invented "authoritarian" pathology, the book's goal was to eliminate antisemitism by "subjecting the American people to what amounted to collective psychotherapy—by treating them as inmates of an insane asylum".
''The Authoritarian Personality'' remains widely cited in the social sciences and continues to inspire research interest today.
["Political conservatism as motivated social cognition", authors John T. Jost, Jack Glaser, Arie W. Kruglanski and Frank J. Sulloway, journal title "Psychological Bulletin", 2003, Vol. 129, No. 3, pp. 339–375]
Hyman and Sheatsley 1954
"Our major criticisms lead us inevitably to conclude that the authors' theory
has not been proved by the data they cite".
Brown 2004
"The most serious defects in the questionnaire work are the inadequate sampling
methods and the operation of response sets.
n spite of that
N, or n, is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''en'' (pronounced ), plural ''ens''.
History
...
there is a
substantial residual probability that the chief conclusion of the questionnaire
work is correct: attitudes of Anti-Semitism, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism
do generally go together.
..some of the findings of the questionnaire study
were replicated in the projectives study, and while this latter work has its own
deficiencies, some account must be taken for the convergence in the two sets of
data."
"Perhaps the least well supported of all the findings in the Berkeley study are
those concerning the genesis of authoritarianism in childhood.
..However,
Frenkel-Brunswik has directly studied prejudice in childhood and adolescence.
She reports confirmation of most of the original findings."
Christie and Cook 1958
Christie and Cook (1958)
cite 230 titles relating to The Authoritarian
Personality and they conclude that:
"...the overall picture shows consistency of findings in many of the most
intensively studied areas. The E and F scales are found to be significantly
correlated in a wide array of samples and predictions of relationships with
attitudinal measures are almost invariably confirmed"
See also
*
Ambiguity tolerance
Ambiguity is the type of meaning in which a phrase, statement or resolution is not explicitly defined, making several interpretations plausible. A common aspect of ambiguity is uncertainty. It is thus an attribute of any idea or statement ...
*
Authoritarian personality
The authoritarian personality is a personality type characterized by a disposition to treat authority figures with unquestioning obedience and respect. Conceptually, the term ''authoritarian personality'' originated from the writings of Erich Fro ...
*
Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder characterized by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, a diminished ability or unwillingness to empathize with other ...
*
Right-wing authoritarianism
In psychology, the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) is a personality type that describes somebody who is highly submissive to their authority figures, acts aggressively in the name of said authorities, and is conformist in thought and behavior. Th ...
*
Psychohistory
Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, chil ...
* ''
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' (german: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus) is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritari ...
''
References
Informational notes
Citations
Further reading
*
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno ( , ; born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund; 11 September 1903 – 6 August 1969) was a German philosopher, sociologist, psychologist, musicologist, and composer.
He was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of criti ...
,
Else Frenkel-Brunswik
Else Frenkel-Brunswik (August 18, 1908 in Lemberg – March 31, 1958 in Berkeley, California, USA) was a Polish-Austrian Jewish psychologist. She was forced to leave Poland and later Austria as a result of anti-Jewish persecution. She is bes ...
,
Daniel Levinson
Daniel J. Levinson (May 28, 1920 – April 12, 1994), a psychologist, was one of the founders of the field of positive adult development. Levinson is most well known for his theory of stage-crisis view, however he also made major contributions ...
and
Nevitt Sanford
Nevitt Sanford (1909–1995) was an American professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and later at Stanford University. A Harvard doctoral student of Gordon Allport, PhD in social psychology and Henry Murray, MD at the ...
. ''The Authoritarian Personality, Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 1.''
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
:
Harper & Row
Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City.
History
J. & J. Harper (1817–1833)
James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...
, 1950.
W. W. Norton & Company paperback reprint edition (1993) .
*
*
*
*
* Gerhardt, Christina.
The Authoritarian Personality: Then and Now" The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies. Eds. Zachary Goldberg and Susanne Knittel. Routledge, 2019. 61–73.
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Authoritarian Personality
1950 non-fiction books
American Jewish Committee
English-language books
Harper & Brothers books
Social sciences books
Works about personality
Works by Theodor W. Adorno
Books about authoritarianism