Obedience: dispositional explanations

• What is the dispositional explanation of obedience

  The authoritarian personality
• high obedience is pathological

  Adorno (1950) believed that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find its causes in the individuals personality
• extreme respect for authority and contempt for inferiors 


  Adorno 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 societies ills
• the authoritarian personality originates in childhood

  through harsh parenting - extremely strict discipline, expectation of absolutely loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism

  its also characterised by conditional love - parents love depends entirely on how their child behaves
• hostility is displaced onto social inferiors 


  these experiences create resentment and hostility in the child, but they cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because they fear reprisals. so the feelings are displaced onto others who are weaker, this is scapegoating
• explain adornos (1950) procedure 


  the study investigated attitudes towards other ethnic groups of more than 2000 middle class white americans. the f scale was used - participants rates how strongly they agreed to statements e.g. obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn.
• explain adornos (1950) findings

  authoritarians identified with ’strong‘ people and were contemptuous 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 category of people. they have fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
• one strength is evidence that authoritarians are obedient. 


  elms and milgram (1966) interviewed 20 fully obedient participants from milgrams original obedience studies. they scored significantly higher on the f scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants. this suggests that obedient people may share many of the characteristics of people with an authoritarian personality
• one strength is evidence that authoritarians are obedient: counterpoint 


  however, sub scales of the f scale showed that obedient participants had characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians. for example, they didn't experience high levels of punishment in childhood. this suggests a complex link and means that authoritarianism is not a useful predictor of obedience
• one limitation is authoritarianism cant explain a whole country’s behaviour. 


  millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and anti semitic behaviour - but cant all have had the same personality. it seems unlikely the majority of germanys population had an authoritarian personality. a more likely explanation is that germans identified with the nazi state. therefore social identity theory may be a better explanation
• one limitation is that the f scale is politically biased


  Christie and jahoda (1954) suggest the f scale aims to measure tendency towards extreme right wing ideology. but right wing and left wing authoritarianism both insist on complete obedience to political authority. therefore adornos theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation as it doesn't explain obedience to left with authoritarianism