authoritarian a03

• A strength dispositional explanations research support .Elms and Milgram interviewed participants from milgram's those went up to max voltage(obedient ) scored higher on the F scale therefore backing adorno’s ideas that there is a correlation between obedience and dispositional factors, specifically right wing authoritarian personalities. Additionally Altemeyer ordered participants to give electric shocks to themselves if wrong answer on a learning experiment. significant positive correlation between higher on the RWA scale and the level of shock they were willing to give to themselves.
• A weakness of dispositional explanations  Would be that there are alternative explanations such as situational factors. In Milgram’s study he found situational factors such as proximity, location and uniform to have a significant effect on obedience levels. For example  when he moved the experiment from yale uni to a run down block of offices obedience levels dropped from 65% to 48% ,
• additionally participants commented that the location gave them confidence in the integrity in the researcher.This proves that situational factors contribute to obedience and therefore it is not correct to assume that obedience to authority can be fully explained by situational factors.. However dispositional factors have been shown to be a key part in obedience levels.
• One limitation of dispositional explanations is that the research is correlational cause and effect relationship can’t be determined other factors affecting obedience which are unknown such as education.  For example Research by middlenorp and meloen showed that less well educated people had consistently more authoritarian personalities . This suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible for both authoritarianism and obedience. Therefore a simple relationship between disposition factors and obedience levels can’t be established.
• + counter 4 elms/milgram

  The evidence was gathered by,/questionnaires so may be effected by social desirability bias as people answer the questions the way they think they need to answer them or in ways that make them seem like a better person. Questions are one sided