Dispositional Explanations to Obedience

What is an authoritarian Personality

Shows an extreme respect for authority

contempt for those who have an inferior social status

believe people who are different are responsible for the ills of society

What is the origins of this personality

• formed through harsh parenting

• parents only show love and affection if the child reaches a certain standard

• child eventually shows resentment and hostility

Explains Adornos research

• investigates obedience personality of middle class white Americans

• developed the F scale (fascism scale) to investigate this

AO1 - Milgram and Elms interviews

• conducted interviews on a sample of obedient participants who scored highly on F - SCALE

• showed that there is a link between obedience and authoritarian personality

• 65% who went up to 450V had high F scale results

• MAIN ISSUE - correlation is not a causation - there could be a third factor that was missed out which could be affecting both variables

Evaluation (WEAKNESS)

• Limited Explanation -

• difficult to generalize an individuals behavior to the majority of population

• WW2 - most displayed obedient and anti semantic views

• however they would have different personalities in general so unlikely all had authoritarian personality - better explanation would be social identity theory (had genuinely believed what they’re doing is right and scapegoated those who were outside of that group)

• Political Bias -

  • F scale only measures the extreme form of right wing ideology

  • Christie and Jahoda - argues that its politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality

  • left - wing authoritarianism hold similar ideologies and both emphasis obedience

• Methodological issues -

  • acquiescence bias (simply agree with everything)

  • social desirability bias - choose the better option rather than real opinions - relies more on self report (can be invalid)

101 police battalion

• Mandel argued that milgram’s explanation of obedience is offensive to the survivors of the Holocaust - situational explanations offer as an excuse or an alibi for evil behaviour

• 101 police battalion - ordered to do a mass killing of Jews, 2% initially left as they could be reassigned a different role and again only 20% left - shows that they werent agents to authority but were autonomous and had free will

• social identity theory is a better explanation - soldiers had genuinely believed that what they were doing was right