Else Frenkel-Brunswik (August 18, 1908, in Lemberg – March 31, 1958, in Berkeley, California, US) was a Polish-born Austrian Jewish[1] psychologist.
[1] From 1939 to 1958 Else Frenkel-Brunswik worked as a research associate at the Institute of Child Welfare, Department of Psychology of the University of California at Berkeley.
[1][3] Their research identified anti-Semitism as the outcome of a more general ethnocentrism characterized by an authoritarian personality structure that was intolerant of ambiguity.
Such individuals were unable to genuinely experience the self and others, instead seeking power and success and relying on rigid stereotypes to ensure order and safety.
[3] In 1950, as product of her collaboration with Theodor W. Adorno, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality appeared.
Although she was unanimously elected to a full professorship in the psychology department at Berkeley, after her husband no longer was employed there, the recognition brought her little comfort.