dispositional explanations for obedience

• what do not all psychologist accept

  obedience can be fully explained by factor within social situations
• what do some psychologist say about personality

  there must be at least some role for the personality or disposition of the individual
• what did theodor adorno argue about defiance

  this difference in behaviour could be due to the ps personality
• what did some ps in milgrams study do

  no all of milgrams ps fully obeyed and some actively rebelled despite them experiencing identical social situation pressures
• what did theodor adorno want to do

  him and his colleagues wanted to understand the anti-semitison of the holocaust
• what did adorno's research lead to

  led them to draw very different conclusions than milgran had
• what did adorno believe

  unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find its cause in the individuals personality
• what did adorno et al conclude about the people with an authoritarian personality are like

  • extremely obedient to authority figures
  • respectful towards people perceived to be of a higher status/ authority figures
  • hostile to people perceived to be lower status
  • preoccupied with power
  • extremely prejudiced
• when are authoritarian personality's formed

  • in childhood through harsh parenting: extremely strict disipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism
  • these expectations create hostility/fear of the parents which displaced onto other people seen as weak
• what is an example of an authoritarian personality

  Donald Trump and Hitler
• what was the aim of adorno study

  to investigate the unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups of more than 2000 middle class white Americans
• what was the method in adorno's study

  • 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 groups
  • they developed a fascim scale (f-scale) which is used to measure the authoritarian personality
  • an example of a question from the f-scale is 'obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn'
• what was the conclusion of the adorno's study

  there is an authoritarian personality which is likely to make people more obedient to authority figures
• what was the f-scale designed to measure

  how authoritarian a person is
• what is a strength of the authoritarian personality (link) (PEEL)

  P - there is support for the link between authoritarian personality and obedience

  E - milgram interviewed fully obedient ps - all scored on the f-scale

  E - however only a link can be found in this way and therefore cause and effect cannot be established so we can not conclude that authoritarian personality is the cause of obedience

  L - this suggest that other factors could be involved in predicting levels of obedience such as agentic state or LOAF
• what is a strength of the authoritarian personality (experiments) (PEEL)

  P - another strength would be their is support from an experiment

  E - Altemeyer (1988) set up an experiment in which an authority figure ordered the ps to give electric shocks to themselves

  E - he found that majority of the ps continued to obey the experimenter

  L - this suggests that people with authoritarian personality are more likely to obey an authority figure, even if it means causing harm to themselves
• what is a limitation of the authoritarian personality (limited) (PEEL)

  P - the authoritarian personality explanation is limited

  E - millions of individuals in Nazi Germany displayed obedience but it is extremely unlikely to a whole population has an authoritarian personality

  E - it seems highly unlikely that the majority of Germany personality all shared 1 personality, for example an alternative explanation would be LOAF and they obeyed due to the high status or agentic state and are in this state giving up responsibility

  L - therefore this suggest that the authoritarian personality is not the only explanation of obedience