Explanations for Obedience: Dispositional Explanation

What is the dispositional explanation of obedience?

Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individual’s characteristics (personality). Such explanation are often contrasted with situation explanations.

What is the Authoritarian Personality?

A type of personality proposed by Adorno as an explanation of dispositional obedience. It claims that personality develops as a result of childhood experiences. Such individuals are especially obedient to people in authority, and are though to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of ‘inferiors’.

What are the characteristics of the authoritarian personality?

• Especially obedient to people of perceived higher status (respectful and submissive).

• View society as ‘weaker’ than it once was, so believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values, such as love of country and family.

• Have rigid thinking (black-and-white thinking), they see the world in strict categories - right/wrong, good/bad - with little tolerance for ambiguity.

• They are more likely to believe in fixed stereotypes about groups of people.

What are the origins of the authoritarian personality?

Adorno et al believed that the authoritarian personality type forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting; strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards, severe criticism of perceived failings and conditional love (e.g. ‘I will love you if you…’).

• This creates resentment and hostility in a child, they’re scared to express these feelings directly to their parents, so their hostility is displaced onto others they perceive to be weaker, known as scapegoating

What was the procedure of Adorno et al. (1950) research?

Adorno et al. studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. The researchers devised a questionnaire known as the potential-for-fascism scale (f-scale).

What are examples of statements on the F-scale?

• ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’

• ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel a great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’

What was the findings of Adorno et al. (1950) research?

Adorno et al. found that authoritarian people (i.e. scored highly on the F-scale) had a cognitive style (way of thinking) in which there was no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people (i.e. black and white thinking) and had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups - positive correlation between authoritarian personality and prejudice.

• People with authoritarian leanings identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous (scornful) of the weak

• They were very conscious of status (their own and others) and showed extreme respect, deference and servility to those of higher status -- these traits are the basis of obedience

What is a strength of Adorno et al. research on authoritarian personality?

There’s evidence from Milgram supporting the Authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience.

• Milgram and Elms (1966) interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and had been fully obedient. They all completed the f-scale as part of the interview

• The obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants

• Supports Adorno et al. view that obedient people well may show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian

What is a counterpoint of Milgram and Elms study supporting the authoritarian personality?

When the researchers analysed the individuals F-scale, they found that the obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians.

• For example, unlike authoritarians, Milgram’s obedient participants didn’t glorify their fathers or experience high level of punishment in childhood

This means that the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex - authoritarian may not be a useful predictor of obedience.

What is a limitation of Adorno et al. research on authoritarian personality?

Authoritarianism cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population.

• For example, in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient, racist and anti-semitic behaviour - despite the fact that they must have differed in personalities in all sorts of ways

• It seems extremely unlikely that they could all be authoritarian

Therefore, Adorno’s theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic.

What is a counterpoint to the point that authoritarianism cannot explain obedience behaviour in the majority of a country’s population?

Situational factors may have a greater influence on obedience levels than dispositional factors.

• Milgram’s research findings showed that variations in the social context of the study (proximity, location, and uniform) were the primary cause of differences in participant’s levels of obedience, not variations in personality.

• Milgram believed that the specific social situation caused participants to obey or resist regardless of their personalities

Evidence is stronger for situational factors as an explanation for obedience. Therefore, although it is likely that authoritarian personality contributes to obedience, a range of situational variables can affect the level of this contribution.

What is a limitation of the procedure of Adorno et al. research?

The f-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology.

• Jahoda (1954) argued that the f-scale is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality

• They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism

• In fact, extreme right-wing or left-wing ideologies have a lot in common. For example, both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authrority

This means that Adorno’s theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that accounts for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.