Dispositional explanation

• define dispositional explanation

  any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality. such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations
• define authoritarian personality

  a type of personality that adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority, such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors
• Overview of the authoritarian personality

  like milgram, theodor adorno wanted to understand the anti-semitism of the holocaust and their research gave them very different answers to milgram, believed a high level of obedience was a psychological disorder and the causes of the disorder lie in the personality of a individual not the situation
• authoritarian personality traits and obedience

  -extreme respect for authority, view society as weaker than in once was due to lack of respect for authority, traditional values eg love for country and family, strong need and want for a leader

  -very dismissive to inferiors and have a unflexible view of the world and have no grey area things are either right or wrong and uncomfortable with uncertanity and these ''other'' people eg other ethnic groups are the problem in society and are a target

  -people with this personality will take orders from authority figures even destructive ones eg nazis
• origins of the authoritarian personality

  -adorno believed it formed in childhood due to being raised by strict and harsh parents with expectations of absolute loyality, high standards and severe criticism and given conditional love eg ''ill love you if''

  -this causes anger and resentimant in a child but fear of punishment these feelings are kept in and then displaced onto others they see as weaker this is called scapegoating

  -explains hatred towards inferior groups in society and is a feature of obedience to higher authority

  -psychodynamic explanation
• Adorno et al's research: procedure

  -1950 studied more then 2000 middle class white american's and their unconscious attitudes to other racial groups and researchers developed a several measurement scales including ''the-potential-for-racism scale'' F scale measured authoritarian personality

  -2 items/phrases given were ''obedience and respect to authority are most important virtues for children to learn'' and ''there is hardly anything lower than a person who doesn't feel great love, gratitude and respect for parents''
• Adornos et al's research: findings

  -people with authoritarian traits eg those who scored higher on f scale measurement and identified with strong people and didnt like weaker people, conscious of status those and others, showed extreme respect

  -also found authoritarian personalities had a certain cognitive style in which is black and white with fixed stereotypes about other groups

  -adorno found a strong link between people with authoritarian personality and prejudice
• Evaluation: research support

  -strength is milgrams support, milgram and alan elms 1966 interviewed small sample of people who had been fully obedient in milgrams previous study and all completed a f-scale

  -these 20 participants scored a lot higher on the overall f-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient people showing these groups are quite different in authoritarinism

  -supports adorno as shows obedient people share characteristics to people with a authoritarian personality
• Evaluation: support counterpoint

  -when researchers analysed the individual subscales (secondary measurment) of the f-scale found the obedient participants had a number of traits that were unusual for authoritarians

  -eg didnt glorify their fathers, didnt experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood and werent hostile towards mothers

  -shows link between obedience and authoritarnism is complex, many obedient participants werent authoritarians so its unlikely to be a useful predictor of obedience
• Evaluation: limited explanations

  -limit authoritarianism cannot explain obedient behaviour in majority of country's population eg in pre-war germany millions displayed obedient racist anti-semitic behaviour despite they all must have differed in personality, unlikley all authoritarian personalities

  -alternative view is that majority of people identified with the anti-jew nazi state and scapegoated the 'other group' jews a social identity theory approach

  -shows adornos theory is limited because other explanations are more realistic
• Evaluation: political bias

  -limitation f-scale only measures the tendencies towards a extreme right-wing ideology and richard christie and marie jahoda 1954 argued the f-cale is a politically-biased interpretation of the authoritarian personality

  -they point out that it leaves out the extreme left wing authoritarianism eg russian bolshevism and in fact extreme left and right ideologies have alot in common eg both believe in importance of complete obedience to political authority

  -adornos theory doesnt account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum
• Evaluation: flawed evidence

  fred greenstein 1969 calls the f-scale 'a comedy of methodological errors' because its seriously flawed eg its possible to get a high score just by selecting agree answers this means the scores are easily manipulated and people can be falsely accused of being a authoritarian personality