Afterword

Abstract

This short afterword looks to the work done by Theodor Adorno and others in the production of The Authoritarian Personality, a quantitative study of psychological traits that might suggest preternatural fascist tendencies in interviewees. This text symbolizes the onslaught of postwar psychographic consumer research, which was only heightened with the use of computer algorithms to more clearly map groups psychology. The book traces the postwar use of “psychography” in marketing, and contends that the book’s tracing of the psychographic turn can help us better understand the contemporary psychographic age, wherein algorithmic sociological profiling has become a dominant force in modern democracy.