OBEDIENCE: DISPOSITIONAL EXPLANATIONS

• The Authoritarian Personality


  High obedience is pathological = 

  ADORNO ET AL (1950) believed that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find its causes in the individual’s personality. 
• Extreme respect for authority and contempt for ‘inferiors’ 


  ADORNO ET AL concluded that people with an authoritarian personality are especially obedient to authority. They: 

  • Have exaggerated respect for authority and submissiveness to it. 
  • Express contempt for people of inferior social status. 

  Authoritarians tend to follow orders and view ‘other’ groups as responsible for society’s ills. 
• Originates in childhood (E.G overly strict parenting) 


  Authoritarian personality forms in childhood through harsh parenting - extremely strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossible high standards, and severe criticism. 

  It is also characterised by conditional love - parents’ love depends entirely on how their child behaves.
• ADORNO ET AL (1950)

  Procedure = 

  The study investigated unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups of more than 2000 middle-class white Americans. 

  Several scales were developed, including the potential-for-fascism-scale (F-scale). Examples from the F-scale (rate on scale 1-6 where 6 = agree strongly):

  • ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’
  • ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’ 
• Findings 


  Authoritarians (who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptous of the ‘weak’.

  They were conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect and deference to those of higher status. 

  Authoritarian people also had a cognitive style where there was no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes (prejudices) about other groups.