Obedience: Dispositional explanation- The Authoritarian personality

Obedience is due to factors within the individual

Procedure

• Adorno et al used F-scale to study unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

Findings

• People with authoritarian personalities identify with the ‘strong’ and exaggerated respect for authority and conscious of status

Authoritarian characteristics

• Extreme respect and obedience for authority and contempt for ‘inferiors’

Origin of the authoritarian personality

• Harsh parenting creates hostility that cannot be expressed against parents so it is displaced

• Conditional love

Research support 🙂

• Some of Milgram’s obedient participants has authoritarian personalities after interviews and had significantly higher scored on F-scale(Elms)

correlation ☹

• Correlation not causation e.g. harsh parenting doesn’t CAUSE this personality

Can’t explain whole countries behaviour ☹

• for example Nazi get many- couldn’t have all had same personality type

• Alternative theory of social identity theory may explain better