Dispositional explanations for obedience

• What is the Authoritarian Personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience?

  • Adorno et al. believed high obedience was pathological and that the causes lie in an individual's personality instead of the situation
  • APs show extreme respect and submissiveness to authority + view society as weak with a need for strong leaders to enforce traditional values -> they are more likely to obey authority figures
  • APs show contempt for those of inferior social status, believing everything is either right or wrong with no 'grey areas'
  • People who are 'other' such as ethnic minorities become a convenient target for authoritarians
• What are the origins of the Authoritarian Personality?

  • Adorno believed AP type forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting, featuring extremely strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards, and overly severe criticisms of perceived failures
  • Parents give conditional love depending on how their child behaves, creating resentment and hostility in the child
  • Since they cannot express these feelings to parents directly in fear of punishment, they displace their fears onto those they perceive weaker (scapegoating) and likely those they consider socially inferior to them
• What was Adorno et al.'s research?

  • Adorno et al. (1950) studied over 2000 middle-class, white Americans unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups using the F-scale or the potential-for-fascism scale
  • Found that those who scored high on the F-scale and had authoritarian leanings were very status-conscious, generally contemptuous of the 'weak' and showed extreme respect to those of higher status
  • Had a 'black and white' cognitive style showing fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups - also finding a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• What is one strength of the dispositional explanation for obedience?

  • Research support: Elms and Milgram (1966) interviewed 20 obedient participants from their original studies and had them complete the F-scale, scoring significantly higher compared to a disobedient control group
  • Supports Adorno's view that obedient people share similar characteristics to those who have an Authoritarian Personality
• What is one limitation of the dispositional explanation for obedience?

  • Political bias: Christie and Jahoda (1954) pointed out that the F-scale only measures far-right Fascism but doesn't account for left-wing authoritarianism such as Bolshevism
  • Extreme right-wing and left-wing authoritarianism both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authority
  • Suggests Adorno's theory is not comprehensive as it doesn't account for obedience across the whole political spectrum
• What is another limitation of the dispositional explanation for obedience?

  • Limited explanation: cannot explain obedience in the majority of a country's population
  • Pre-war Germany saw millions of individuals display obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour despite individual personality differences and seems extremely unlikely that they all had an AP
  • Some suggest majority of Germans identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated Jewish people, using social identity theory
  • Shows Adorno's theory is limited as alternative explanations are much more realistic
• What is another limitation of the dispositional explanation for obedience?

  • Flawed methodology: Greenstein suggested the scale is susceptible to acquiescence bias - where respondents always respond in the same way by just selecting 'Agree' answers, regardless of the content shown in the scales
  • Suggests the findings produced by the F-scale may be lacking in validity and reliability