What is the Authoritarian Personality?

• • A personality type/pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience or submission to authority.  
• • This is based on the belief that obedience to authority is DISPOSITIONAL à obedience can be explained by the individual’s own personal characteristics, rather than situational factors or influences within the environment. 
• • In his experiment, Milgram found that that, though the participants didn’t want to hurt another person, they had a stronger desire to obey authority. Some participants had stronger tendencies to obey authority – Milgram was intrigued as to whether it was specific personality traits that meant that people obeyed.