Evaluation

• Limited explanation

  Only a questionnaire

  How did millions form the nazi party if obedience is dispositional?

  Its clear that there's other factors involved, such as social identity
• Political bias

  Only measures the tendency towards an extreme right-wing ideology

  Left wing can be equally destructive

  Both seek obedience to legitimate authority - Chinese Maoism

  Is therefore not very comprehensive
• Methodological problems

  Greenstein (1969) - "F-scale is a comedy of methodological errors"

  The wording encourages agreement

  Those deemed authoritarian are now those who are most willing to agree
• Issues with correlation

  Correlation looks at the relationship between two variables

  • Authoritarianism + Obedience
  • Authoritarianism + prejudice
  • Harsh parenting + Obedience

  Correlation does not always equal causation
• Elms and Milgram (1966) - Aim

  They researched into whether people with authoritarian personalities are more likely to obey an authoritative figure
• Elms and Milgram (1966) - Procedure

  Found participants from Milgram's last experiment (2 months prior)

  20 'obedient' participants and 20 'defiant' participants (the ones that continued shocking and the ones that didn't)

  Took a personality test and an F-scale test

  Then asked open ended questions about things such as childhood, parents and their attitudes towards observer, teacher and participant in the prior experiment
• Elms and Milgram (1966) - Findings

  Little difference between 'defiant' and 'obedient' on personality test
• Elms and Milgram (1966) - Conclusion

  The link is merely a correlation, not a causation - meaning that authoritarian personalities and obedience are not dependent on each other