Obedience: Dispositional explanation

• Authoritarian personality and obedience:

  • People with an authoritarian personality (AP) have respect for the concept of authority and are submissive to it, they also respect the concept of ‘inferiors’, they believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country. They are more likely to obey orders from a source of authority, and for them there are no ‘grey areas’ (everything is either right or wrong).
• Origins of the authoritarian personality:

  • Adorno believed the authoritarian personality types forms in childhood through harsh parenting - extremely strict discipline, expectations of absolute loyalty, impossible high standards, and severe criticism. Also by conditional love-parents (love depends on how the child behaves). This parenting style creates hostility in the child because they fear reprisals, so they displace their feelings onto others who are weaker (scapegoating)
• Adorno et als research on the authoritarian personality:

  > Procedure: 

  • Investigated 2000 middle-class white Americans attitudes towards other ethnic groups
  • Several scales were developed including the F-scale (scale 1-6, 6 = agree strongly), questions such as ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’
• Adorno et als research on the authoritarian personality:

  > Findings: 

  • Authoritarians (who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong people’ and disrespected ‘weaker’ people
  • They were conscious of theirs and others' status while showing excessive respect to those of higher status
  • Authoritarians have a cognitive style with fixed and distinctive stereotypes (prejudice) about other groups
• Strength of authoritarian personality: Evidence from Milgram supporting the authoritarian personality. Elms & Milgram interviewed 20 fully obedient participants from Milgram's original obedience studies; they scored higher on the F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants. This suggests obedient people share characteristics of people with an authoritarian personality.
• Limitation of authoritarian personality: Authoritarianism can't explain a whole country's behaviour. Millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedience and anti-semetic behaviour - but can't all have had the same personality. Therefore social identity theory may be a better explanation. (Social identity theory (SIT): the view that our behaviours and attitudes are strongly influenced by those of the groups we identify with)
• Limitation of authoritarian personality: Adorno’s theory is politically biased. The theory doesn’t explain obedience to left-wing authoritarianism; it aims to measure tendency towards right-wing ideology. (Left-wing = freedom, equality vs Right-wing = hierarchy, duty)
• Limitation of Adornos authoritarianism study: Greenstein suggests the F-scale is flawed, it is possible to get a high score just by selecting ‘agree’ answers, therefore research with the F-scale may not be valid.