An introduction to The Authoritarian Personality study.
Timestamps:
0:00 Fascisticus Potentialicus
01:51 Introduction
05:07 Defining Fascism / Ur-Fascism
07:03 Antisemitism and Ethnocentrism
11:31 Fascism, Conservatism and Religion
16:09 The Authoritarian Personality
23:18 ConclusionsThis month’s episode of What the Theory? is an introduction to the Authoritarian Personality study, carried out by T.W. Adorno (a key member of the “Frankfurt School” and central force in the development of Critical Theory), Else Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel J. Levinson and R. Nevitt Sanford at the University of California, Berkeley in 1950.
Following the end of World War 2, these four psychologists were interested in finding out what had motivated so many supposedly ordinary citizens in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe) to participate in the awful designs of the fascist regimes that had taken hold there.
Eventually, they laid out what they called The Authoritarian Personality, a set of personality traits which they argued might make some people more susceptible to fascist ideology than others.
This is what they found out…