Dispositional explanation

• Authoritarian Personality

  Type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority.

  Individuals are thought to be submissive to those of a higher status and dismissive of inferiors.

  View society as 'weaker' than it was so need strong powerful leaders
• Origins of Authoritarian Personality

  Adorno believed that it formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting + conditional love.

  Argued these childhood experiences created resentment and hostility in a child but they cannot express to their parents as they fear punishment.

  Fear is displaced onto others who they perceive to be weaker.
• Adorno et al.'s research - procedure

  Studied more than 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups.

  Researchers developed the F scale to measure authoritarian personality -> potential for fascism scale.

  Item on the F scale -> 'Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn'
• Adorno et al.'s research - findings

  People with authoritarian leanings (high score on F scale) identified with 'strong' people and were contemptuous of the 'weak'. They were conscious of status and showed extreme respect to those of higher status.

  They had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups.

  Strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
• Strength - research support

  Milgram

  Interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and were fully obedient.

  All completed the F scale as a part of the interview.

  20 obedient participants scored significantly higher on the F scale in comparison to 20 disobedient participants.
• Counterpoint - research support

  When researchers analysed the individual subscales of the F scale, found obedient participants had characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians.

  e.g. they didn't generally glorify their fathers or experience harsh punishment in childhood.
• Limitation - limited explanation

  Cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country's population.

  In pre-war Germany, millions displayed disobedient and anti-Semitic behaviour despite the fact they would have differing personalities.

  Unlikely they could all possess Authoritarian personalities.
• Limitation - cultural bias

  F-scale only measures tendency towards extreme right-wing ideology

  Christie + Jahoda

  Argued the F-scale is a politically biased interpretation of Authoritarian Personality.

  Doesn't account for the whole political spectrum.