1.6 obedience: dispositional explanations 🧡

Key terms

Dispositional explanation — any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality.

Authoritarian personality — a type of personality that is especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. Thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors

Authoritarian personality

— Adorno wanted to understand the holocaust, concluded that obedience is due to the individual rather than the situation —

Authoritarian personality and obedience

  • Adorno argued people with authoritarian personality are submissive to authority and are dismissive of those who are inferior

  • View society as weaker than it once was, so we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values.

  • So they are more likely to obey orders

Origins of the authoritarian personality

  • Adorno believed this forms in childhood, mostly as a result to harsh parenting. Parents who give conditional love and have high standards

  • Argued that this creates resentment and hostility, but the child cannot express this so their fears are displaced onto others who they perceive as weaker (scapegoating)

Adorno’s research

Procedure

  • studied more than 2000 middle class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards ethnic groups.

  • Developed the f-scale (potential-for-fascism scale), for example ‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important things a child can learn’ agreed —> disagree

Findings

  • people who scored high on the f-scale (authoritarian) identified with strong people are were more dismissive of the weak

  • They were conscious of status and showed more respect to those of higher status

  • Also found they had a different cognitive style (way of perceiving others). They had more distinct and fixed stereotypes

  • Found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Evaluation

Research support

  • Milgram and Elms interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and had been obedient

  • Completed the f-scale and found they scored higher than a comparison group of disobedience participants

  • Counterpoint — however there were a number of characteristics that were usual for authoritarians, e.g did not experience harsh punishment in childhood, did not glorify their fathers and didn’t have hostile attitudes towards their mothers

Limited explanation

  • cannot explain obedient behaviour for a whole countries population

  • It is highly unlikely that most people in Germany had authoritarian personality

  • An alternate view is the social identity theory. The German people identified with the anti-Semitic nazi state and scapegoated Jews

Political bias

  • the f-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology

  • Christie and Jahoda argued the f-scale only criticises the far right, they point out that left wing authoritarianism is the Russian Bolshevism, which is also harmful

  • So it does not account for obedience across the whole political spectrum

Flawed evidence

  • Greenstein suggests the f-scale is a very flawed scale, for example it is possible to get a high score just by selecting ‘agree’ answers.

  • This means its easy to have a response bias which leads to incorrect results