Case study of edgar adorno

10. Adorno’s work suggests that obedience levels in adulthood can be explained by looking at childhood experiences and parenting styles, but what issues are there with accepting this view? We will study Authoritarian Personality again when we look at factors affecting prejudice.

Conventional; they defend traditional values. Adorno came to the conclusion that people with authoritarian personalities showed a greater inclination for putting people into the categories of “us” or “them”. They obviously considered the “us” group superior.

He gathered the evidence to support this conclusion from case studies, psychometric tests, and clinical interviews. For case studies, he was primarily interested in the Nazis. In terms of the tests, he used the F-scale, with F standing for “fascism”. The data he gathered seemed to defend the existence of an authoritarian personality.

Adorno has been criticized for not looking at the role of social environmental factors, as it certainly seems that high levels of destructive obedience and prejudice are more common at times of socio-economic and political upheaval. Loading... Be the first to like this.