The Berkeley authoritarianism study’s success came from ignoring the objective dimension of anti-Semitism.

Evidence

The success of the Studies in Prejudice, it might be argued. had resulted in part from an avoidance of the issue. The analyses of anti-Semitism in The Authoritarian Personality and in “Elements of Anti-Semitism” - the one dealing with the subjective dimension, the other more with its objective side — were never really reconciled. In fact, one reason why the Berkeley project succeeded while Adorno’s collaboration with Lazarsfeld was a failure was that the former did not concern itself with the “objective spirit” of modern society in the way in which the latter did. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 762

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: why a psychological study succeeded precisely by narrowing its frame — a case study in how avoiding a hard theoretical problem can produce a more successful empirical result.
• BMF: The gap between a study’s empirical success and its theoretical shallowness, and a collaboration failing because it refused that narrowness, resonates with the theme of principled refusal of easy success in ‘A Very Minor Prophet’ — but no specific plot point matches. Not claiming this.
• XREF: connects to: The Berkeley project aimed to prove experimentally that anti-Semitism threatens democracy — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1584; The Berkeley study first united Frankfurt theory with empirical research — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1759