dispositional explanations for obedience

what is the authoritarian personality

• Adorno

• type of personality in which people have extreme respect for authority and are more susceptible to obeying people who hold power over them. exhibits traits:

• severe criticism of perceived failures

• identified themselves with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous of the weak

• submissive to authority figures

• experienced harsh authoritarian parenting as a child including the use of physical punishment

• falls on nurture side of ‘nature vs nurture’ debate → believes external factors (authoritarian parenting) had effect on this personality

what is the F-scale

• Adorno (1950)

• questionnaire of 30 questions which measures authoritarian personality. denotes rating of fascism

• taken by over 2000 white middle-class Americans → interviewed and Adorno found correlation btwn. high scores and harsh, punitive upbringing

strength of dispositional explanation

supporting evidence for the authoritarian personality

• Elms and Milgram (1966) took 20 ppt who went up to 450V and 20 who refused → all completed F-Scale → people who went up to 450V scored significantly higher } supports theory that people with authoritarian personalities more likely to obey

limitations to authoritarian personality

F-scale is argued to be a politically biased tool for authoritarianism therefore limiting its generalisability

• Christie and Jahoda (1954) argue that the F-scale implicitly assumes that authoritarian traits are inherently fascist or right-wing → therefore this scale overlooks similar authoritarian dynamics found in extreme left-wing ideologies

F-scale has flawed methodology due to potential response bias therefore risk of demand characteristics, lowering the validity of the findings

• statements worded in a confirming direction → if someone agrees with all statements they are classed as highly authoritarian → therefore easy for people to find out purpose of questionnaire which introduces social desirability bias and demand characteristics. this means the findings may not be valid since responses may be inaccurate.

theory overly reductionist therefore validity decreased

• harsh parenting isn’t the only factor which can lead to authoritarian personality. Milgram found low levels of education also increased obedience, therefore extraneous variables aren’t considered and so the link between harsh parenting and authoritarian personality is only correlational