obedience dispositional explanation

Authoritarian personality

A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.

Procedure

Adorno et al. (1950) investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed several scales to investigate this, including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale) which is still used to measure authoritarian personality.

Two examples of items from the F-scale are: 'Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn, and There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel a great love, gratitude and respect for his parents'.

Findings

people with authoritarian leanings (i.e. those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with 'strong' people and were generally contemptuous of the weak.

They were very conscious of their own and others' status, showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of higher status.

There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Limitations - flawed F scale

Every single item on Adorno's F-Scale was worded in the exact same "direction." To score highly as an authoritarian, a participant simply had to tick "Agree" all the way down the page, reduces internal validity.

Limitation - Political bias

The F-Scale suffers from political bias because it equates authoritarianism purely with right-wing ideologies. it is not a comprehensive, politically neutral explanation for the psychological mechanism of obedience.