Allport saw anxiety at the core of authoritarianism while Adorno emphasized aggression

Evidence

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. … 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. … 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. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 2439

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes two rival theories of the authoritarian personality by their differing core mechanisms and latent variables.
• XREF: Clarifies the intellectual origins for reading about authoritarianism, which connects to later political psychology work on dangerous-world beliefs.