dispositional explanations

    Cards (13)

    • Adorno wanted to understand anti-semitism in WW2, he believed that extreme obedience was result of physiological disorder linked to personality
    • questionaire developed to understand unconscious attitudes of 2000 white American middle class on minority ethnic groups
    • f scale developed after, one factor measured was authoritarian aggression
    • authoritarian aggression means to condemn, reject and punish those who violate conventional rules
    • authoritarians who scored high on F scale identified as strong and disliked weak people.
    • they had fixed strong and clear ideas of right and wrong with excessive respect to those of higher status
    • authoritarians had a cognitive style with fixed stereotypes of other groups
    • authoritarian personality forms in childhood with harsh parenting, high standards, extreme discipline and criticism. it is also characterised by conditional love
    • childhood experiences causes resentment and hostility, cannot be expressed on parents due to fear therefore displaced onto weaker people. this is scapegoating
    • weakness: limited explanation, millions of individuals displayed anti-semitic behavior and obedience but didnt have same personality. unlikely majority of Germany had possessed authoritarian personality. social identity theory is more realistic explanation Germans identified with their country, then their views
    • weakness: f-scale is politically biased, researcher suggest the F-scale aims to measure tendency to extreme right wing, both right and left wing authoritarianism are obedience to political authority, Adorno theory is not comprehensive as it doesnt explain obedience to left wing-authoritarianism
    • weakness: most research uses correlations, Adorno measured variables and found significant correlations, no mater how strong correlation is it doesnt mean one causes another. therefore adorno cant claim harsh parenting causes authoritarian personality
    • weakness: flawed methodology, questions are worded in a direction so scale is measuring the tendency to agree, researchers knew the scores when interviewing pp and hypothesis therefore bias is likely, suggest the data collected is meaningless and lacks validity.
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