Allport and Adorno diverged on what core drives authoritarian prejudice

Evidence

There are four interesting differences in Allport and Adorno et al.’s views of the authoritarian personality, all of which are relevant to subsequent research and theoretical developments on personality and prejudice. (1) For Allport, the fearfulness, inadequacy, and anxiety of the authoritarian was at the core of his or her prejudice, while for Adorno et al. it was displaced hostility and aggression. (2) Allport suggested that social environmental factors, such as demagogy and the social context, interacting with personality, created prejudice and aggression by activating and directing the fearfulness, anxiety, and inadequacy of the authoritarian, whereas social factors were largely ignored by Adorno et al. (3) Allport hypothesized that a particular worldview, specifically that people are basically bad and that the social world is a dangerous and threatening place, is an important component of the authoritarian syndrome, while Adorno et al. did not. (4) Allport’s authoritarian surface traits emphasized a rigid, simplistic, and restricted cognitive style, which was a direct expression of the authoritarian’s fearfulness, anxiety and inadequacy, while Adorno et al. did not (perhaps because they saw repressed hostility and aggression rather than fearfulness and anxiety as the core of the syndrome). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2439

Categorization

• XREF: Precisely tabulates the divergence at the heart of the vault’s prejudice-psychology thread between the Allport and Adorno models of authoritarianism.