Dispositional explanations for obedience

• Adorno wanted to understand the behaviours of the SS soldiers and Hitler’s antiSemitism of World War II. However, their research came up with contrasting findings to those of Milgram. They believed that it was peoples dispositional characteristics and personality that made them more or less obedient
• Adorno created the F-Scale which measured peoples fascist ideologies
• Fascism is a political movement that embraces far right nationalism, and the forceful suppression of any opposition, all overseen by an authoritarian government
• Adorno investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial grapes. He developed several scales to investigate this, including the F-scale, which is used to measure, authoritarian personality
• Causes of an authoritarian personality

  • parents, black-and-white views of good and bad pass on their children
  • Parents force children to get rid of anger
  • Sexual impulses - project these onto despised minorities in society
  • Punishment and discipline in childhood
  • inconsistency in childhood
• authoritarian behaviours

  • aggressive
  • Dangerous
  • Displacement of anger onto someone weaker than them
  • Black-and-white, thinking
  • Blind respect for people above them
  • respect and obedience for those in authority
• Results of Adorno’s study (1950)

  • those who scored high on the F scale identified with strong people who felt they were better than the weak
  • They were conscious of status, and showed extreme respect to those above them
  • Authoritarian people had a cognitive style and distinct stereotypes about other groups
  • strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• Authoritarian personality, a psychodynamic explanation. It formed in childhood as a result of harsh, parenting, and high expectations and standards. Their fears and feelings of anger are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker than them. This explains the hatred towards people who are weaker or who belong to other social groups