Dispositional explanation (6)

The authoritarian personality (1)

High obedience is pathological

• Like Stanley Milgram, Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand the antisemitism of the holocaust

• They believes that high levels of obedience was basically a mental health condition 

• Tried to find causes in the individuals personality

Esteemed respect for authority and contempt for ‘inferiors’

The authoritarian personality (2)

Adorno et al concluded that people with Authoritarian personality are especially obedient to authority

• They exaggerate respect for authority and submissiveness to it

• Express contempt for people of ‘inferior’ social status

• Tend to follow orders and view ‘other’ groups as responsible for society’s ills

Originates in childhood (overly strict parenting)

Authoritarian personality forms in childhood through harsh parenting - extremely strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism

The authoritarian personality (3)

It is also characterised by by conditional love - the caregivers love depends entirely on how their child behaves

 

Hostility is displaced onto social ‘inferiors’

These experiences create resentment and hostility in the child’s who cannot express these feelings directly against their parents or caregivers because of fear.

 

So the feelings are displaced onto others who are weaker- this is scapegoating. A psychodynamic explanation.

The authoritarian personality (procedure 1)

• More than 2000 middle class white American participants were studied

• The F - scale measured ‘potential facism’ and statements where rates on a 1-6 where 6 meant strongly agreeing

 

“Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn”

 

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

The authoritarian personality (findings 1)

Authoritarian personalities identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous of the ‘weak’

The were conscious of their own and other status, showing excessive respect and deference to those of higher status

AP’s had a cognitive style with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups (prejudices)

A03 - F scale, obedient people share characteristics of people with AP’s (Elms and Milgram)

Elms and Milgram interviews 20 fully obedient participants from Milgram’s original obedience studies

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

• This supports Adorno’s view that obedient people may share many of the characteristics of people with AP’s.

A03 - obedient behaviour is frequent and doesn’t mean there is only one personality type, AP is not an explanation to all antisemitism

Millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and antisemitism behaviour but they can’t all have the same personality type

• It seems unlikely that the majority of Germany’s population had AP. A more likely explanation is that some German people identities with he antisemitism Nazi state.

• Therefore social identity theory may be a better explanation for obedience. (Our identity is strongly influenced by those groups we identify with)

A03 - 2 elements to AP, submission is key element to AP, Adorno’s theory can’t explain all historical incidents

Mallinas suggests that there are two elements to authoritarianism: submission and traditionalism

 

Both of these are strong in right- wing authoritarians but only submission is strong in left wingers (Bolshevik Russia)

This means that ‘submission’ is the key element in AP and Adorno’s theory cannot explain all of historical incidents of destructive obedience