Authorianism Similarities

This essay will outline the similarities and differences between two studies, which tried to explain how authorianism is characterised and how it developes. An authoritarian personality can be defined by obedience to authorities, following rules and deprecative behaviour towards people beeing contrasting to oneself.
First it will compare the backgrounds of the studies, next it will focus the methods used.Third it will analyze the findings and conclusions of the two studies and last it will examine the limitations of them.

The backgrounds of Adorno et al`s and Altemeyer’s studies were quite different.
Adorno et al's study has been conducted in the year 1950 in the United states, a few years after the second world war ended. Most of the participating

Those differences in their methods resulted in different findings and conclusions.
Adorno et al concluded that the underlying causes of authorianism is the upbringing. Influenced by psychoanalytic theory they identified childhood as a main culprit for an authoritarian personality. Those who scored high on the authoritarian scale where brought up in a stricter family environments than those who scored lower. Children who are raised by very strict and harsh parents, develop both positive feelings and neagative feelings against those. This is explained with the help of psychoanalytic theory, which state that children want to please their parents. Those harsh upbringings brings them into a situation where they feel both love and hat towards their caregiers and those feelings result result in an inner conflict. The feelinge get hidden in the unconscious and have an influence later in life. They place them on other people, especially on those who are different or more vulnerable than

They both have the same shortcoming of beeing more descriptive than explanatory. The two have their sets of charateristics what an authortarian personality defines. But the explanation of the development of authorianism through psychoanalytic theory or social learning didn't include the environmental factors which play an important role in personality development. Besides that they did not explain in what circumstances this behaviour occurs.

Understanding results of scientific studies always require critical examinations of certain points, like the background the aims and objectives of the researcher, the methods used. The aims of the studies where similar, both tried to explain authorianism, the historical,political background was different for each study. They used different scales and the explaining of the data was influenced by different psychological theories, which then made an impact on the conclusions drawn by the researchers.
Comparing the similarities and differences between Adorno et al.’s and Altemeyer’s approach to authoritarianism showes us that even if studies have the same questions that they want to answer the come both to different explanation. Both studies provided important insights into the explanation and development of authotarian personality,and built a solid foundation for future