The Authoritarian Personality

Milgram's research explained obedience through the situation: people gave what they believed were dangerous electric shocks because of features around them, such as the proximity of the authority figure, the location and the uniform. But this raises a problem. In Milgram's original study, not everyone obeyed. Around 35% of participants refused to go to the maximum 450 volts, even though the situation was identical for everyone.

If the situation was the same, why did some people resist while others obeyed fully? This is where a dispositional explanation comes in.

A dispositional explanation locates the cause of behaviour inside the person, in their stable personal characteristics such as personality, rather than in the situation they happen to be in.

Adorno et al. (1950) proposed that some people are simply more obedient because of the kind of person they are. They called this personality type the Authoritarian Personality. It is not something you are born with. On their account it is nurtured in childhood, and it later shapes how a person responds to authority for the rest of their life.

Type of explanation	Cause of obedience	Key example
Situational	Features of the situation	Proximity, location, uniform (Milgram)
Dispositional	The person's own personality	The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno)

Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand the psychological roots of obedience and prejudice, partly in response to the events of the Second World War. They studied more than 2,000 middle-class white Americans, investigating their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.

To measure the personality they were interested in, Adorno et al. developed a questionnaire called the F-scale, short for the "California F scale" or the potential-for-fascism scale. Participants rated how strongly they agreed with a series of statements. Those who agreed strongly with statements expressing respect for strong leaders and contempt for the "weak" scored highly.

The pattern in the results was clear. People who scored high on the F-scale identified with "strong" people and were dismissive of the "weak". They were also more likely to hold prejudiced views about other groups and to show conventional, rigid attitudes.

The F-scale is a self-report questionnaire measuring the strength of a person's authoritarian personality: the higher the score, the more strongly authoritarian the person.

This gave Adorno et al. a way of measuring, and then describing in detail, the cluster of traits that make up the Authoritarian Personality.

From their findings, Adorno et al. built up a profile of the authoritarian person. High scorers on the F-scale tended to share a recognisable set of characteristics. These traits fit together: a person who submits to authority also tends to look down on those below them, and to see the world in rigid, black-and-white terms.

Trait	What it looks like
Submission to authority	Extreme respect for, and obedience to, those in authority
Belief in strong leaders	View that society is "weaker" and needs powerful leaders
Contempt for the "inferior"	Dismissive, hostile attitude to those of perceived lower status
Conventional attitudes	Traditional views on race, gender and social class
Rigid thinking	"Black-and-white" thinking with fixed categories
Intolerance of uncertainty	Discomfort with ambiguity and anything that is unclear

The central feature for the exam is the combination of submissiveness to those above and contempt for those below. An authoritarian person shows extreme deference to authority figures while being dismissive and hostile towards people they see as of lower or inferior status.

Do not confuse "authoritarian" with simply being a strict or bossy person. In this theory it is a specific personality type defined by submission to authority, conventional values, rigid thinking and hostility to those seen as inferior.

Adorno et al. gave the Authoritarian Personality a psychodynamic origin, rooting it in early childhood. On their account it develops through a particular style of upbringing: harsh, strict parenting.

This parenting typically involves:

• extremely strict discipline and rigid rules
• an expectation of absolute loyalty and obedience
• conditional love, where affection depends on the child behaving as the parents demand
• high standards, with severe criticism of any perceived failing

The child, understandably, feels hostility and resentment towards these demanding parents. But the child also fears them and depends on them, so this hostility cannot be expressed directly. According to the psychodynamic explanation, the feelings do not simply disappear. Instead they are displaced onto other people who are perceived as weaker or socially inferior, a process called scapegoating.

Scapegoating is the displacement of hostility, which cannot safely be aimed at its real target (the parents), onto a weaker or "inferior" group. This is Adorno's explanation for how prejudice and a submissive attitude to authority arise together.

This is why the theory ties together two things that might otherwise seem unconnected: a submissive, obedient attitude towards authority figures, and prejudice or hostility towards minority groups. Both are traced back to the same repressed childhood hostility.

The Authoritarian Personality would only matter for the study of obedience if authoritarian people actually obey more. Elms and Milgram (1966) carried out a follow-up study to test exactly this.

They selected 20 obedient participants (who had gone to the full 450 volts) and 20 disobedient participants (who had refused to continue) from Milgram's original obedience experiments. Each participant completed the F-scale so their level of authoritarianism could be measured.

The key finding:

The obedient participants scored significantly higher on the F-scale than the disobedient participants.

This is direct evidence for a link between the authoritarian personality and obedience. The participants who had been willing to obey fully were, on average, more authoritarian than those who had defied the experimenter. This supports Adorno's central claim that a disposition, not just the situation, helps explain who obeys.

An important caution comes with this result, and it becomes the first point of evaluation. Elms and Milgram measured a correlation: obedience and authoritarianism went together, but the study cannot show that one caused the other.

A strong exam answer weighs the evidence for and against this explanation (AO3). Work through these developed points.

Research support, but only a correlation. Elms and Milgram (1966) found obedient participants scored higher on the F-scale, which supports the link between authoritarianism and obedience. However, this is a correlation, not a cause. A third variable may underlie both. For example, Middendorp and Meloen found that less-educated people tend to be both more authoritarian and more obedient, so a lower level of education may drive both, rather than authoritarianism causing obedience.

It is a limited explanation. The theory struggles to explain obedient behaviour across a whole population. In pre-war Germany, for instance, millions of people displayed obedience and anti-Semitic behaviour. It is unlikely that they all shared the same personality type, or the same harsh childhood. An alternative such as social identity theory offers a better account of mass obedience, explaining it through people identifying with a group rather than through one shared personality.

Political bias. The F-scale measures the tendency towards right-wing authoritarianism only. It ignores the reality of left-wing authoritarianism, which shares many features such as respect for a strong leader and rigid ideology. Because it captures only one end of the political spectrum, the F-scale is not a politically balanced or comprehensive measure of authoritarianism.

Methodological flaws in the F-scale. Every item on the F-scale is worded in the same direction, so agreeing with a statement always increases the authoritarian score. This means anyone with a tendency to agree with statements, known as acquiescence bias or a response set, is scored as authoritarian regardless of what they actually believe. This undermines the validity of the measure.

Evaluation point	Strengthens or weakens?
Elms and Milgram support	Strengthens (but correlational)
Third factor: education	Weakens
Cannot explain mass obedience	Weakens
Political bias (right-wing only)	Weakens
Acquiescence bias in F-scale	Weakens

1. Confusing the dispositional and situational explanations

The Authoritarian Personality is a dispositional explanation: obedience comes from the person's personality. Milgram's proximity, location and uniform are situational. If a question asks for a dispositional explanation, describing Milgram's situational variables scores nothing.

2. Treating the Elms and Milgram correlation as proof of cause

Elms and Milgram found that obedience and F-scale scores went together, but this is a correlation. It does not prove that authoritarianism causes obedience. A third factor, such as lower education (Middendorp and Meloen), may explain both. Flag this limitation whenever you use the study as support.

3. Forgetting the childhood, psychodynamic origin

Marks are available for explaining where the personality comes from: harsh, strict parenting producing hostility that is displaced onto weaker groups (scapegoating). Answers that only list the adult traits and skip the childhood origin leave marks on the table.

4. Saying the F-scale is a balanced political measure

The F-scale measures right-wing authoritarianism only and ignores left-wing authoritarianism. Presenting it as a fair, complete measure of authoritarianism is wrong and misses a strong evaluation point.

5. Describing "authoritarian" as just being bossy or strict

The Authoritarian Personality is a specific cluster of traits: submission to authority, contempt for the "inferior", conventional attitudes, rigid thinking and intolerance of uncertainty. Reducing it to "someone who likes being in charge" loses the definition marks.