Dispositional explanations of obedience

• Dispositional- explanation of individual behaviour caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individuals personality
• Authoritarian personality

  • Collection of traits developed from strict parenting
  • Obedient/ submissive towards people of perceived higher status
• Adorno created the F scale in order to test how authoritarian a person is
• Fascist- submission to authority, usually political, and accepting violence as a way to achieve this
• Characteristics

  • Submissive to authority
  • Inflexible with their outlook
  • Society is 'going to the dogs'
• Authoritarian personalities can be down to harsh parenting
• Harsh parenting- strict discipline, expectations to be completely loyal, high standards, unconditional love for parents- even if they do not agree with them
• Harsh parenting creates hostility and fear in the child, they go on to displace these feelings onto the 'weak'
• Elms and Milgram (1966)

  • obedient participants scored higher on the F scale
  • Obedient participants were less close with their fathers during childhood
• Evaluation

  • Generalisability
  • Correlation does not equal causation
  • Acquiescence bias