The authoritarian personality (dispositional )

• What is the authoritarian personality?


  The Authoritarian Personality is a DISPOSITIONAL explanation of obedience (an explanation of individual behaviour caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individual's personality

  
  

  it is suggested that - people with an authoritarian personality are thought to be more prone to obedience
• What does authoritarian mean?


  favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
• FEATURES OF AN AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  Obedient to authority

  extreme respect for authority

  inflexible with their outlook - no grey areas (everything is black and white), view society is ''going to the dogs''

  
  

  Believe we need strong + powerful leaders to enforce traditional values, such as love of country, tradition and family, show contempt towards people they perceive as having an inferior social status, highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender, view everything as either right/wrong and are uncomfortable with uncertainty
• Why does Adorno suggest people have this personality?


  (Adorno findings)

  Harsh parenting- strict discipline and expectations to be completely loyal, high standards, expectation of unconditional love for parents?

  
  

  These experiences create hostility and despair in the child- who displaces these feelings onto the 'weak' (scape-goating.) This explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority (represent their parents) which is a dislike (even hatred) for people who they see as inferior or belonging to other social groups. This is a psychodynamic explanation as displacement is a defense mechanism (developed from 0-5yrs of life)
• PROCEDURE:

  Adorno et al. (1950) investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.

  
  

  They developed several scales to investigate this, including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale) which is still used to measure authoritarian personality.

  
  

  Two examples of items from the F-scale are: 'Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn', and 'There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel a great love, gratitude and respect for his parents'.
• FINDINGS:

  Adorno concluded that people with authoritarian personalities were likely to categories people into "us" and "them" groups, seeing their own group as superior.

  
  

  Therefore, the study indicated that individuals with a very strict upbringing by critical and harsh parents were most likely to develop an authoritarian personality.

  Adorno believed that this was because the individual in question was not able to express hostility towards their parents (for being strict and critical)

  
  

  Consequently, the person would then displace this aggression / hostility onto safer targets, namely those who are weaker, such as ethnic minorities.

  Adorno et al. felt that authoritarian traits, as identified by the F-Scale, predispose some individuals towards 'fascistic' characteristics such as:
• More of Adorno's Findings:

  Ethnocentrism, i.e, the tendency to favor one's own ethnic group:

  Obsession with rank and status

  Respect for and submissiveness to authority figures

  Preoccupation with power and toughness

  
  

  In other words, according to Adorno, the Eichmanns of this world are because they have authoritarian personalities and therefore are predisposed cruelty, as a result of their upbringing.
• A03 strength(supporting evidence-Milgram and Elms)


  P- one strength is that there is supporting evidence from Milgram and Alan Elms

  E- they interviewed small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and been fully obedient

  E- they all completed the F-Scale. These 20 obedient participants scored significantly higher than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants

  L- these 2 groups were clearly quite different in terms of authoritarianism obedient people show similar characteristics to authoritarian personality
• A03 weakness- limited explanation

  P- one weakness of the AUTHORITARIAN personality is that it is a limited explanation as it cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of the country's population e.g., ante-bellum Germany millions of individuals displayed obedient ,racist and anti-Semitic behaviour

  E- this was despite the fact they would all have different personalities. It seems unlikely that they would all have an authoritarian personality

  E- an alternative now is that the majority of German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state , and scapegoated the 'out-group' of Jews, a social identity theory approach

  L- therefore the explanation is an incomplete explanation of obedience
• A03 weakness- Metho

  P- one weakness of the methodology of the researched used to develop and support Adorno's Authoritarian Personality

  E- The F-scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of left-wing ideology. Christie and Jahoda (1954) argued that this is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality.

  E- They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape, for example, of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism. In fact, extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have much in common - not the least of which is that they both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to legitimate political authority.

  L-This is a limitation of Adorno's theory because it is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.