AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY

• DISPOSITIONAL EXPLANATIONS OF OBEDIENCE?

  Authoritarian Personality
• WHAT IS AN AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  type of person who prefers a social system with a strong ruler/ collection of traits developed from strict or rigid parenting
• TRAITS DEMONSTRATING AN AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  • hostile to those of a status below them
  • obedient towards those with a perceived higher status
  • ethnocentric
  • rigid in views
  • intolerant of different people
  • conservative attitudes
  • shows prejudice
• EXAMPLE OF AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  many of the world's dictators (e.g. Hitler), high number of Trump supporters in 2016 election
• RESEARCH SUPPORT FOR AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  ADORNO ET AL

  • 2000 middle class Americans given F-scale
  • found those who scored highly on scale were more likely to serve those of a higher status (obey authority)

  ELMS AND MILGRAM

  • gave obedient and disobedient participants from Milgram's experiment the F-scale
  • obedient participants scored higher on F-scale than disobedient
  • obedient participants less close to fathers during childhood
• WHAT DOES THE F-SCALE DO?

  measure Authoritarian Personality
• CRITICAL POINTS FOR AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY?

  FAILS TO CONSIDER ROLE OF SITUATIONAL FACTORS

  • increased proximity, increased obedience
  • not just personality type influencing an individual

  CANNOT EASILY ACCOUNT FOR OBEDIENCE OF ENTIRE SOCIAL GROUPS

  • unlikely all Nazis had the same personality

  DIFFICULT TO ESTABLISH CAUSE AND EFFECT

  • between authoritarianism and obedience
  • only a correlational relationship (cannot say one caused the other)
  • other factors play a role (e.g. education)