AO3 - dispositional explanations

• A limitiation is the F-scale has been criticised as a measurement of an authoritarian personality

  • Acquiescence bias: people tend to agree to questions
  • The F-Scale was written in a way that agreeing to all the questions would artificially inflate their score on the authoritarianism scale leading to inaccurate measurement
  • Additionally, Adorno was a left-wing thinker, and some questions are argued to be biased against people with a right-wing political view
• (+) Elms and Milgram (1966)

  • Twenty obedient males who had given the highest levels of shock in previous Milgram studies and twenty defiant males who had refused were given the F scale
  • The obedient males scored significantly higher on the F scale, suggesting they had authoritarian personalities; they also tended to dehumanise or hold more negative attitudes towards the learner and see the experimenter as someone knowledgeable and trustworthy
• (+) Explains extreme variations of obedience in Milgram’s Px

  • In Milgram's study, a significant proportion, 35%, resisted the authority figure; this can't be explained by situational factors alone, as each participant had precisely the same experience
  • However, Adorno's theory acknowledges that the willingness to obey an authority figure can vary from person to person, offering an explanation as to why there are extreme variations in Milgram's participants