Dispositional factors affecting obedience

• Outline dispositional factors affecting obedience

  Authoritarian personality:

  • Adorno argued that this personality type was susceptible to obeying people in authority
  • these individuals are thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of those of lower status (inferiors)
  • they are inflexible in their outline i.e. there is right or wrong full stop
• Outline dispostional factors affecting obedience: origin

  • Adorno believed it formed in childhood
  • as a result of harsh parenting
  • which creates resentment in the individuals
  • who displace their emotions and push their hostile feelings onto others who they perceive to be weaker than themselves
  • which links to the freudian psychodynamic theory
• Outline dispositional factors affecting obedience: researcher


  Adorno et al (1950)

  • examined the cause of the authoritarian personality on over 2000 middle class white americans
  • developed the potential for the facism scale (F-scale) to measure the authoritarian personality
  • Adorno found:

  1. those who scored highly on the f-scale identified with strong people and were disrespectful to the weak
  2. there was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism, prejudice and obedience
• Dispositional factors A03: interviews +-


  Milgram and Elms interviewed fully obedient participants

  • all scored highly on the f-scale test
  • HOWEVER
  • correlation does not always mean causation
  • Hyman and Sheatsley (1954) said that education is a more important factor
  • least intelligent obey unquestionably
• Dispositional factors A03: german soldiers -


  authoritarian personalit cannot explain why the germans behaved the way they did

  • millions of germans obeyed, but they did not all have an authoritarian personality
  • suggests there must be other factors
  • Tajfel's social identity theory
  • people adopt a different identity depending on context
• Dispositional factors A03: internal validity -


  Greenstein states that all questions are worded in the 'same direction' pushing participants to agree - leading questions

  • damages validity of the f-scale
  • researcher bias
• Dispositional factors A03: reductionist -


  ingores situational factors

  • Milgrams proximity, location, uniform
  • Bickman
• Dispositional factors A03: sample -


  all middle class white americans

  • not representative
  • cannot generalise