6. Dispositional Explanations For Obedience

What are dispositional explanations of obedience?

Explanations that based on internal factors, such as personality.

What is the main dispositional explanation of obedience?

The authoritarian personality.

What is the authoritarian personality?

A personality type that makes individuals more likely to obey authority figures

What is the aim of Adorno et al study?

To story pp unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

What is the procedure of Adorno et al study?

2000 middle class, white Americans

Used the F-scale questionnaire (potential fascism) to measure the relationship between personality and prejudices beliefs

What are the findings of Adorno et al study?

High score- “strong” people, otherwise “weak”

> black and white thinking, fixed stereotypes about other groups of people.

Basic origin of the authoritarian personality

It develops due to harsh, strict parenting in childhood. This leads to fear of parents, causing excessive respect for authority, or it leads to hatred of parents, which is repressed and displaced onto weaker individuals, resulting in hostility towards those seen as socially inferior.

Strengths of Authoritarian personality

Research support

Ev: Milgram et al conducted a follow up study on pp from original experiment. They found that whose who were fully obedient ( went to 450V) scored high in F-scale. Ex: Suggests that indiv. with an authoritarian personality are more likely to obey authority, supporting the idea of personality traits influencing obedience. L: High internal validity, clear link between authoritarian traits and obedience behaviour.

Weakness of authoritarian personality

Limited explanation

Ev: It fails to account for situations in which large number of people obey, such as the widespread obedience and prejudice shown towards minority groups of Germany WW2. Ex: Unlikely that such a large proportion of the population has the same traits (authoritarian personality). So obedience is influenced by situational factors, like social pressure. L: Weakness the explanation, as doesn’t fully explain the true cause of obedience

Methodological issue

Ev: In the F-scale it was possible to get high score from simply selecting “agree” without even reading it. Ex: The questions are asking about controversial topics (religion, war), so pp can lie to appear more socially acceptable, so finding are not correct. L: Decreases internal validity, as doesn’t accurately measures the obedience.