Obedience: dispositional explanations

What is a dispositional explanation?

any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individual’s personality. Such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations

What is the authoritarian personality?

a type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. They are submissive to those of higher status and dismissive to inferiors

What was the aim of Ardono’s F-scale experiment?

to understand the anti-semitism of the Holocaust (why Nazis has obeyed Hitler’s orders) by locating a personality related cause of high levels of destructive obedience

What was the procedure Ardono used in his experiment?

• obtained a sample of more than 2000 middle-class white Americans

• they developed several scales to investigate the causes of the obedient personality and measure their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

• this included the F-scale (potential fascism) which is still used today to measure authoritarian personality

What were the findings of Ardono’s experiment?

• People with authoritarian leanings (who scored high on the F-scale) identified with 'strong' people and were contemptuous of the 'weak'.

• They were very conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect to those of higher status.

• Authoritarian people have a cognitive style where there was no 'fuzziness' between categories of people. They have a fixed and distinctive stereotype about other groups.

• There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

What was the conclusion of Ardono’s experiment?

People with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority and have extreme respect / be submissive to it.

What are some examples of things on the F-scale?

• ‘human nature being what it is, there will always be war and conflict’

• ‘people can be divided into 2 distinct classes: weak and strong’

• ‘most social problems would be solved if we got rid of the immoral and feebleminded’

Where do authoritarian personalities originate from?

1. forms as a child as a result of harsh parenting (includes strict discipline, expectations of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism of failings)

2. characterised by conditional love - parents’ love for child depends on behaviour

3. this creates resentment and hostility in the child as they can’t express feelings due to fear of punishment

4. fears are displaced onto others who are perceived as weaker (scapegoating)

5. explains the central trait of obedience to higher authority

How is the fact that there is research evidence for linking authoritarian personality with obedience a strength?

as it suggests that those who are more obedient may have more authoritarian characteristics, supporting the idea that personality plays a role in obedience

Give an example of this strength

for example, Milgram and Elms interviewed fully obedient ppts from Milgram’s original study and found they scored significantly higher on the F-scale than disobedient ppts

How is the fact that the research supporting the authoritarian personality has flawed methodology a weakness?

because self-report questionnaires are subject to social desirability. This reduces the internal validity of Ardono’s research and so reduces the credibility of it being able to support the authoritarian personality

Give an example of this weakness

for instance, Ardono’s F-scale is based on self-report questionnaires and many questions were worded in one direction making it easy to agree with all statements

How is the fact that the authoritarian personality struggles to explain obedience across whole populations a weakness? (+counter/development)

as it shows that dispositional explanations are limited and cannot be used to explain mass obedience

D : a situational explanation (e.g conforming to Nazi ideology) may provide a better understanding of such large-scale obedience

Give an example of this disadvantage

for example, in Nazi Germany, millions of individuals displayed highly obedient and racist behaviour, yet it is unlikely they all had authoritarian personalities

How is the fact that the authoritarian personality has practical applications a strength?

as it means the theory, although flawed, still contributes to psychology’s role in preventing destructive obedience

Give an example of this strength

for instance, understanding that certain individuals may be predisposed to obey authority can help in developing education programs to encourage independent thinking and resist blind obedience