Adorno's theory of the authoritarian personality

authoritarian personality traits:

Traits that are more common in for this personality type

exaggerated respect for authority

look down on people of lower social status

more likely to obey orders

obsessed with social hierarchy

Adorno was interested in explaining the actions of the Nazis in World War 2.

Adorno's theory is a very different explanation of Nazi behavior or other criminally obedient behavior than Milgram's

Adorno's explanation of the authoritarian personality type hints that some people may be more likely to agree with a government that discriminates or creates social hierarchies that favor them

Theses personality types might be more likely to obey unjust laws

Milgram was interested in random individuals obedience to random unethical commands; however, Adorno was interested in general personality traits that contribute to excessive or criminally obedient behavior.

Adorno proposed that the authoritarian personality is created in childhood.

Adorno believed that it is created from overly strict parenting and excessive criticism

Adorno claimed that these parenting types expect absolute loyalty of their children and have unrealistically high standards with conditional love. Adorno would say that this causes people to be more obedient, even to bad authorities.

Cognitive style

Adorno believed that people with an authoritarian personality have a certain cognitive style that makes them more likely to see things as "black and white"

cognitive style means a "way of thinking"

This cognitive style makes them believe stereotypes and generalizations more often

scapegoat: in some religions, people would sacrifice an animal to apologize to a god they believed in to try to solve a problem. When people use the word now, it means blaming a problem on someone or something else.

Adorno believed that people with the authoritarian personality were more likely to look for scapegoats for their problems. They were more likely to displace their anger onto others.

A weakness of Adorno's theory is that he based his theory on a test that might not be a valid measure of authoritarian personality.

People who are more likely to agree to statements are more likely to be rated as an authoritarian on Adorno's test. People who are more disagreeable are less likely to be rated as an authoritarian on Adorno's test. This is a problem because the test might be rating how likely someone is to agree with things rather than measuring their personality.

Another weakness of Adorno's theory is that his data is correlational. This means that a score on the test cannot be proven to mean someone has a certain personality