Dispositional Explanations

Authoritarian Personality:

• Introduced by Adorno 1950

• tried to locate the causes of obedience in personality of the individual

Sample of Study:

• 2,000 middle class, white American men

Procedure:

• developed the F-scale

= an obedience questionnaire used to measure authoritarian personalities

Findings:

• strong positive correlation between people who scored highly on F-scale and those who are prejudiced, status driven and stereotypical etc

Conclusion:

• high F-scale score = high likelihood of an authoritarian personality = high levels of obedience

AO1 Psychodynamic Explanation:

• develops in childhood

due to harsh parenting (strictness/conditional love etc)

• child grows up to be resentful but cannot act out on the resentment due to fear of punishment

• therefore the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker

Evaluation - Research Support:

Milgram and Elms

• Interviewed a small sample of full obedient ppts from Milgram’s study

(who reached 450v)

• They gave them the F-scale test = they scored very highly

= This suggests a relationship between authoritarian personality and obedience

Evaluation - Alternative Explanations

• very unlikely all german nazis happened to have strict parents and subsequent authoritarian personalities

• This means an alternative such as agentic state might be used in tandem

For example: Adolf Eichmann

Evaluation - Weak Methodology

• Greenstein criticised the F-scale as the questions all lead in the same direction

= meaning ppts could score highly just by agreeing with everything.

• This undermines the validity of the findings because high scores on the F-scale may reflect a tendency to agree with statements rather than genuine authoritarian personality traits.

• Furthermore, the sample is extremely culturally and gender bias.

• This is because it takes place in the USA which is an individualistic culture which may respond to authority and obedience level may differ in collectivist cultures.

• The sample also only studies men which emphasises the minimisation of differences between how men and women separately respond to obedience.

= This causes beta bias.

• Social desirability bias = lying on questionnaire

Evaluation- Political Bias:

• Christy and Johoda argued the F-scale has a tendency to extreme right wing ideas

• Adornos theory ignores the possibility that authoritarian traits could exist for left wing people as well.

= This limits the explanatory power of Adorno’s theory