ABSTRACT
In tracing the history of the study of the authoritarian personality, one is tracing concomitantly the history of the way in which the traditional study of person ality has merged with the experimental analysis of social behavior. The original research published in The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950) began as an effort to identify the “potentially fascistic” individual, that person who would be susceptible to anti-Semitic ideology and, more generally, to anti-democratic political appeals. The search for this designated personality type was founded on the assumption that psycholo gists could isolate a “more or less enduring organization of forces within the individual ” and that consistency of behavior is attributable to the “persisting forces of personality (Adorno et al., 1950, p. 5).” The assumption of stable dispositions which are reflected in cross-situationally consistent behaviors is basic to the development of personality typologies. Personality is conceived of as a predisposition to particular modes of behavior and its measurement potentially allows us to predict behavior.
