The Frankfurt Institute’s questionnaire predicted German workers would weakly resist a rightwing takeover

Evidence

In general, the interviews disclosed a wide discrepancy between avowed beliefs and personality traits. Approximately to percent of the seven hundred respondents exhibited what was called an “authoritarian” character, a personality syndrome the Institut was to spend much of its subsequent time and energy exploring. Another 15 percent expressed a psychological commitment to antiauthoritarian goals and were thus deemed likely to live up to the revolutionary rhetoric of the left, if circumstances demanded it. The vast majority, however, were highly ambivalent. As a result, the Institut concluded that the German working class would be far less resistant to a rightwing seizure of power than its militant ideology would suggest. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 392

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the Institute’s ‘authoritarian character’ personality type as it originated in this study.
• ADDENDUM: The finding that the working class’s revolutionary rhetoric masked ambivalence connects to the Institute’s later empirical turn and to ‘The Authoritarian Personality’ work.