Dispositional A03

• Milgram and Elms


  Conducted an interview with a group of Ppts who scored highly on the F Scale who were very obedient thinking there might be a link between obedience and authoritarian personality
• Link between obedience and authoritarian personality

  Merely a correlation between two measured variables. Impossible to say that authoritarian personality causes obedience; third factor may be involved- limitation
• Hyman and Sheatsley

  Obedience and authoritarianism may be associated with a lower level of educations and not directly linked with each other
• Individual personality


  Cannot be used as an explanation for the majority of a country's population. E.g. In pre-war Germany, millions of Germans displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behaviour yet all their personalities differed
• Social identity

  Social identity is a better explanation for Adorno's theory as it explains obedience -limitation
• Daniel Goldhagen


  American historian who wrote the controversial book Hitler's Willing Executions, which argued that majority of Germans identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the Jews
• Christie and Jahoda


  F scale is politically biased as it is more right wing. Adorno did not compare with left wing.
• Left wing and Right wing

  In Russian Bolshevism, the left wing ideologies are very similar to right wing as they both emphasise the importance of obedience to a legitimate political authority.
• Adorno's limitation on political bias

  Limitation to Adorno's theory as he did not account for obedience to authority across the whole political scale
• Greenstein


  F scale is a 'comedy of methodological errors'. Severe criticism as scale only goes in one direction. People can get a high score just by ticking the same lines of boxes down one side.
• acquiescers

  people who accept something reluctantly but without protest
• Adorno's interview

  Adorno interviewed small sample of people about their childhood experiences to see its effects on Authoritarian personality. However, he already knew their test scores- limitation so he knew who had AP
• Correlation of variables

  Adorno found that there were many correlations between variables like authoritarianism and prejudice. But that does not mean one variable causes another. Adorno could not claim that harsh parenting style caused AP