Dispositional: Authoritarian personality

• The dispositional explanation is any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individuals personality i.e their disposition
• Authoritarian personality is a type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to o0being people in authority. Such individuals are thought to be submissive of those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.
• Adorno was interested in investigating why Nazi soldiers were so willing to prosecute and kill members of minority groups e.g. Jews. A high level of obedience is basically a psychological disorder
• AP views society as weaker than it once was and believe we need strong powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love for our country and family.
• AP show contempt towards those of inferior social status and have no grey areas, meaning everything is either right or wrong and are uncomfortable with uncertainty.
• Dev of AP:

  • Very disciplined upbringing
  • Parents are harsh, show little affection and issue severe punishments, usually the farther
  • Unconscious hostility towards parents
  • Consciously have very high opinions of their parents
  • Hostility is displaced onto weaker/inferior targets
  • Resulting in prejudice views and discriminatory behaviour
• Adorno Procedure:

  • Investigated cause of an obedient personality
  • 2000 middle-class white Americans
  • Unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
  • Dev an F (Fascist) scale to measure the relationship between a persons personality type and prejudiced beliefs
• Adorno Findings:

  • Generally contemptuous of the weak
  • Extreme respect, deference and servillity to those of higher status - basis traits of obedience
  • Very conscious of own and others status - High scores had particular cog style:
  • No 'grey areas' between categories of ppl
  • Fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
  • Strong pos correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
  • High score = identification of an authoritarian personality
  • possible explanation why some ppl require very little pressure to obey
• Research support:

  Milgram and his assistant Elms conducted follow-up interviews with 20ps from Milgram's og study who had been fully obedient. They scored higher on tests of authoritarianism and lower on scales of social responsibility than those who defied the experimenter. These findings support Adorno's claims as obedient people scored higher on the F scale which is what the theory would determine. Although a correlation could only be determined, therefore, only showing a relation and not causation i.e AP caused obedience.
• weakness:

  • An explanation of obedience in terms of an individual's personality cannot explain behaviour in the majority of a country's population, therefore, not all German people can have the same personality
• Weakness - Methodological problems

  • Interviews were vulnerable to interviewer bias, as interviewers knew hypothesis leading to problems f researcher bias as knowing p's scores meant they knew in advance whether p was likely to have A personality
  • May have even recorded only info needed to confirm hypothesis