Obedience - Dispositional Explanations

• Who did a study on authoritarian personality?

  • Theodor Adorno
• What was Adorno investigating?

  The cause of obedience personality
• How many people did he study? What did they have?

  2000 middle-class, white Americans

  • unconscious attitude to other racial groups
• What did Adorno develop for the study?

  Several scales - Fascism scale (F-scale) - still now used to measure authoritarian personality
• Give 2 examples of items on the F-scale

  • 'Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues that children should learn'
  • There is hardly anything lower than a person who doesn't feel a great love, gratitude & respect for their parent'
• What did Adorno Find?

  • People with authoritarian leanings - having a high score on F-scale - identify with 'strong' people & are contemptuous of the weak ->> conscience of their own & others status - showing excessive respect/servility to higher status
  • Authoritarian people have a cognitive style - no 'fuzziness' between categories of people -> have fixed stereotypes --> positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
• What are some characteristics of authoritarianism?

  • Obedience/extreme respect (submissiveness) to authority
  • Despise people they see with an inferior social status
  • Convectional (traditional) attitude to sex, race, gender
  • Powerful/ strong leaders needed to place traditional value
  • Inflexible outlook - everything is either right or wrong -> uncomfortable with uncertainty
• Where is the authoritarian personality believed to originate from?

  From people childhood who had harsh parenting
• What are some characteristics of harsh parenting?

  • Extreme strict discipline
  • High expectations/standards
  • Absolute loyalty needed to parents
  • Severe criticisms to failings
  • CONDITIONAL LOVE - parents affection dependant on the child's behaviour
• Where was the fear displaced to?

  -> displaced onto others who they saw weaker than them - scapegoating

  --> explains the central trait of obedience to higher authority
• What was harsh parenting believed to create?

  Created resentment & hostility - wasn't able to express against parents -> fear of retaliation from parent
• STRENGTH - RESEARCH SUPPORT - M&E

  -> Milgram & Elm - participants in Milgrams study who were most obedient scored higher on F-scale than those who resisted -> supports the link between A.P & obedience

  -> A.P and obedience only a correlation - between measuring 2 variables - could be another factor
• LIMITATION - LIMITED EXPLANATION - personality

  ->Obedience in terms of individual personality is hard to explain in majority of a country's population

  >Pre-war, Germany, millions of individuals possess obedient/racist behaviour - all must have differed in personality in some way but its EXTREMELY unlikely for all of them to have A.P

  ---> an alt explanation would be more realistic