Evaluation of adorno et al 1 PDF

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Evaluation of Adorno et al Authoritarian personality. 

Acquiescence response bias – a tendency to agree with statements presented in scales, regardless of content.

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From the results, it is impossible to determine whether the respondent has an authoritarian personality, or whether they are just the type of person who agree to any statement encountered in questionnaires. Cannot be ascertained for sure if the scale measured authoritarianism or not.

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The solution to this would be to include a mix of positive and reverse statements. This means rewording them in such a way that a participant would have to disagree with a statement in order to exhibit authoritarian ideas. An example of this is Bass (1955). Half of the items on the F scale were reversed. Ie original ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ compared with reversed ‘familiarity does not breed contempt’

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Many later studies that have done similar to Bass (1955) and found substantial support for the authoritarian personality, although these tendencies are usually less pronounced than originally thought. Acquiescence response bias therefore did influence Adornos’ findings, it didn’t completely invalidate the research.

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Confirmatory bias- a tendency to pay attention to those features of a phenomenon that appear to confirm prior expectations.

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Rosenthal (1966) pointed out that researchers who conducted the interviews knew whether they belonged to the low or high scoring group from the questionnaires. They also knew the basic hypothesis for the research. This knowledge may have inadvertently influenced the context of the interview and interpretation of what the participants said.

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Double blind procedures – neither the participant nor the investigator know which group the participants belong to, thus reducing the risk of bias in interpretation of results.

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If authoritarianism was the main cause of the events between 193345 in Nazi Germany, then that would mean there was a higher prevalence of authoritarian personalities in Germany, compared with other countries where nazism did not develop.

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Pettigrew (1958) wanted to see if there was a difference in authoritarianism between apartheid South Africa, southern USA, and northern USA where racial policies were all different. Authoritarian personality levels as measured by the f scale were similar across the three groups. Little evidence of a link between the prevalence of authoritarian personality and actual levels of prejudice within a society (Duckitt 1989)

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Authoritarianism alone is not sufficient enough to account for the differences in prejudice and levels of support for racial discrimination.

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Unconscious processes keep individuals fixed in particular kinds of personality, and lead them to repeat the same kinds of behaviour.

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If authoritarian personality is a stable quality, then sudden reductions in authoritarianism would be difficult to account for.

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An authoritarian personality is neither necessary nor sufficient for explaining prejudice. Evidently, social environment, cultural norms and political context all play a key role.

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However! Adorno et al argued from the outset that the authoritarian personality was a predisposition, likely to manifest itself only in certain soci-economic conditions.

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Billig (1978) referred to the work of Adorno et al as ‘the single most important contribution to the psychology of fascism’ and as ‘a major landmark in the history of psychology.’

Summary 1: authoritarian personality has been criticised for methods and interpretations

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2: research that addressed the issue of acquiescence response bias in the design of the f scale found that authoritarianism is a valid phenomenon and that some individuals display characteristics associated with authoritarian personality. 3: confirmatory bias was identified as a potential problem during interviews because researchers knew scores from the survey. 4: later research questioned whether authoritarian personality was necessary or sufficient to explain events such as those in Nazi Germany.

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