Dispostional explanation

• What did Adorno et al want to understand?

  The anti-semitism of the holocaust
• what did their research lead them to find?

  • they drew very different concluions from milgrams
  • hey believed that high levels of obedience was a psychological disorder
  • they believed that the causes of such disorder lie in the personality of the individual rather than in the situation
• what is an authoritarian personality?

  a type of personality that Adorno argued were more likely to obey people in authority
• what did Adorno argue in terms of people with AP?

  that they show extreme respect and submissivness to authority.

  such people view society as ‘weaker’ than it once was, so believe we need a strong powerful leader to enforce traditional values.

  people with AP also seem to look down upon those of a lower social stat us.

  they also believe there is only right or wrong and no inbetween.
• what are the origins of AP?

  • AP forms in childhood, mainly from harsh parenting
  • this parenting style typically features extreme disipline and an expectation of absolute loyalty.
  • Adorno et al argued that these experiences create resentment and hostility which can not be be expressed directly so is diffused onto others who are ‘weaker’
• what did Adorno et al base their theory on?

  research data
• what was Adornos procedure?

  • 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups
  • researchers developed many measurement scales, including the F-scale
  • this scale is used to measure authoritarian personality
• what did Adorno et al find?

  • people with authoritarian learnings identified with strong people and were generally disapproving of the weak
  • they showed extreme respect to those of higher status
• what is a strength of this?

  • evidence fro milgram supporting the authoritarian personality
  • elms and milgram interviewed an small group of ppts from the original study who had been fully obedien.
  • these 20 ppts all scored significantly higher on the f-scale than disobedient ppts
  • this finding supports Adorno et al‘s view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have AP
• what is a weakness of this study?

  • Authoritarianism cannot explain obedient behaviour In a countrys population
  • In pre-war Germany, million of individuals displayed obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour.
  • It seems extremely unlikely that they could all posses AP
  • An alternative view is that therefore, the German people identified with the anti-semtic nazi state, and scapegoated the outgroup of Jews
  • Therefore Adornos theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic.