Dispositional factors affecting obedience

What is a dispositional factor

Explanation of individuals behaviour caused by internal characteristics within the individuals personality.

What is authoritarian personality

They’re obedient to people of higher status, cant express how they feel due to fear of being punished so displace their emotions on the weak.

Why do people have authoritarian personality

Laid in early childhood due to harsh parenting, high standards, strict discipline

What was Adorno’s belief

Individuals personality determines how obedient the are

Believe people who have authoritarian personality are highly obedient to those in authority and submissive to those inferior.

What was Ardornos procedure

He measured 2000 peoples white Americans attitudes to other ethnic groups.

Developed questionnaire called F scale to measure authoritarian personality levels.

High on F-scale were status-conscious, more obedient to people in authority, were submissive, had district views about other ethnic groups- positive correlation between authoritarian personality and prejudice

What were the findings of Ardornos

People with authoritarian personality identified with strong and pitied the weak. Showed extreme respect and flattery to those with high status

What was milgram’s and elms procedure (research support for authoritarian personality)

Participants who were obedient in milgram’s study completed personality questionnaire including Adornos F scale to measure AP see if there was a link between obedience and authoritarian personality. Were also asked open questions about their relationship with their parents and with the experiment in Milgrams study

Found obedient participants scored high on F scale and were less close to their fathers during childhood, admired experimenter in Milgram’s study.

Supports Ardorno view that obedient people show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian personality.

Imitation of milgram and elms (biased sample)

he used a biased sample, 2000 middle class white Americans who are more likely to have an authoritarian personality due to. Demographic time of study.

Research lacks population validity and historical validity so conclusions cant generalise to people outside of study.

Limitation of measuring authoritarian personality (methodological criticisms)

F-Scale can be response bias or social desirability where participant where participant give answers that are socially acceptable.

Participant may appear authoritarian as they believed their answers were socially correct so are incorrectly classed as authoritarian.

This reduces internal validity of questionnaire research used as there are other factors responsible for obedient behaviour

Limitation- Individual differences and external factors that contribute to explanation of authoritarian personality

Research found less educated people are more likely to be authoritarian than well educated ppl.So not authoritarian personality characteristics alone lead to obedience but other factors too.

Elms & Mikgrma study suggests a link between AP and obedience but this is correlational not causational so hard to draw conclusion about exact cause of obedience and there’s situational factors (proximity…) that affects obedience.

Shows other factors play a role