Obedience: dispositional explanation

Authoritarian personality:

Extreme respect for people in authority, view society as weaker than it once was, and so, believe we need powerful leaders to enforce traditional views. They are conscious of status and there are no grey areas, there is a right and wrong way. Therefore people who are 'others' are responsible for the ills of society.

Authoritarian personality origins:

Formed in childhood, due to harsh parenting (high standards). Adorno believed this created resentment towards the parent, but because the child was scared of their parent they wouldn't be able to express these feelings. Their fears got displaced onto others who were perceived to be weaker and this is why they have hatred towards people who are considered socially inferior.

Adorno’s research:

(1950) studied more than 2000 middle-class white Americans using the F-scale. E.g. “respect and obedience are the most important values for a child to learn.”

He found that people who scored high on the f-scale were more likely to obey people in authority and conscious of their own status. He also found that these people had a certain cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories. They had a fixed way of thinking and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.

Research support

Milgram and Elms (1966) found a link between fully obedient people, from Milgram’s study, and high scorers on the F-scale. Reinforcing validity.

Correlational not causation

There is just a correlation between the high score on the F-scale and the authoritarian personality. They cannot find a cause and effect between the two variables. Giving it a limited explanation

Limited explanation

In pre-war Germany, the majority of people were obedient and anti-semitic. Can’t generalise authoritarian personality to a large amount of the population. More likely that the people identified with Nazi values