Political Compass

The political compass was influenced by theories of personality proposed by Theodor Adorno. Before Adorno’s book The Authoritarian Personality, fascism, a political system that does not fit anywhere on the Left-Right Political Scale, was viewed as a purely political phenomenon. Adorno instead suggested that fascism had its roots in the psyche and was correlated to personality. The political compass builds on the idea of political personalities and identities which necessitates the second authoritarian/libertarian social scale.