The Authoritarian Personality

This article is about the book. For the psychological trait of authoritarianism, see Authoritarian personality. For the form of government, see Authoritarianism.

The Authoritarian Personality
Cover of the first edition
AuthorsTheodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, Nevitt Sanford
Published1950
PublisherHarper & Brothers
Media typePrint
ISBN978-0-06-030150-7

The Authoritarian Personality is a 1950 sociology book by Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, during and shortly after World War II.

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)."[1] 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 and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.[2][need quotation to verify][3]

Though criticized at the time for bias and methodology,[4][5] 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."[6]

  1. ^ Codevilla, Angelo (16 July 2010) America's Ruling Class Archived 25 February 2011 at the Wayback Machine, The American Spectator
  2. ^ Adorno, Theodor; Frenkel-Brunswik, Else; Levinson, Daniel; Sanford, Nevitt (1993) [1950]. The Authoritarian Personality. Studies in Prejudice Series. Vol. 1. New York City: Harper & Row and W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31112-0.
  3. ^ Adorno and the political By Espen Hammer p.62
  4. ^ Mangus A. R. (1954). "Studies in the Scope And Method Of 'The Authoritarian Personality' (Book)". Rural Sociology. 19 (2): 198–200.
  5. ^ Wolfe Alan (2005). "'The Authoritarian Personality' Revisited". Chronicle of Higher Education. 52 (7): B12–B13.[1]
  6. ^ Glazer, Nathan. (1954). "New light on The Authoritarian Personality: A survey of recent research and criticism." Commentary 17 (March), pp. 289–297.