Logical Positivism or Critical Theory as the Methodological Foundation of The Authoritarian Personality?

Abstract

In this paper, the central research question discusses to what extent logical positivism or critical theory forms the methodological core of the seminal work on the authoritarian personality. A central thesis is that due to her background in psychology, logical positivism and psychoanalysis and her neglected but central role in the authoritarian personality study, Else Frenkel-Brunswik has had a much more lasting and productive influence on authoritarianism research than Adorno as the rep­resentative of critical theory. This was certainly not reflected in the public discourse or in intellectual discussions, at least in Europe. This article shows how the original F-Scale was changed in subse­quent research and how the application of psychometric techniques improved. However, by employ­ing Lakatos’ concept of the research programme, I analyse how authoritarianism research developed in a degenerative way by reducing the number of factors from nine to three and giving up the psy­choanalytic explanation of the underlying mechanisms, a systematic test of sociological and contex­tual factors, and the original mixed method approach of combining surveys and qualitative inter­views. Finally, the issue of the effects of idealisation of parents on the measurement of the items and the use of typologies were not tackled in later research. Employing data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS), I describe how some of Frenkel-Brunswik’s central methodological and theoretical ideas have been tested using confirmatory factor analyses and structural equation mod­els. Finally I summarise the way in which the research programme can be developed more fruitfully by integrating developmental psychology, sociology, political science, psychoanalysis and statistical generalised latent variable models.