explanations of obedience

• authoritarian personality - is bought about by parenting and could be genetic
• the more authoritarian you are the more likely you are to obide 
• this tends to come from conditional love - as they are confusing due to them providing love at specific moments 
• parenting has a huge impact and influence on the personalities that we tend to grow 
• a study by adorno in 1950 had supported authoritarian personality
• adorno and milgrim believed that the high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual. they had developed an F scale which is still used up until today
• procedure:

  • studied on 2000 middle class white americans and their unconcious attitude towards other racial groups

  they then developed a set of skills to investigate this and included the potential of fascism - which is still used to measure authoritarian personalities
• findings:

  • those scoring high on the F scale tend to see themselves as stronger members of society and have content to people who are weak - they are very conscious of authority
  • they show excessive respect to positions of authority
  • very distinctive stereotypes and have black and white views
  • have very clear views of what men and women need to do
  • an example can be EDL members, white fascits - very far right wing - do not change their views