Dispositional explanation for obedience

• who created authoritarian personality

  Adorno et al (1950)
• Participants

  2000 white middle class American men
• What is the scale called that Adorno created

  F-scale (F = facist)
• Findings - high F-scale

  the authoritarian

  • identified with strong people and are disrespectful and scornful to the weak
  • very conscious of their own status and others and show excessive defence servility (serving others)to those of higher status
• causes of authoritarian personality

  • extremely strict parenting
  • extremely strict discipline
  • impossibly high standards
  • severe criticism from parents
  • an expectation of absolute loyalty
• strict upbringing = willingness to seek out authority - so that they cab show loyalty and unquestionably obey
• Authoritarian Personality

  Personality type characterized by obedience to authority figures
• Milgram study- supporting research

  • Interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and been fully obedient
  • Participants completed the F-scale (and other measures) as part of the interview
  • Obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants
• 1. scale

  Measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology
• The F-scale is a politically-biased interpretation of Authoritarian Personality
• There is a reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism
• Extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have a lot in common, for example they both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authority

  
  

  Adomo's theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that accounts for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum
• Alternative view


  The majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the 'outgroup' of Jews, a social identity theory approach - It seems extremely unlikely that they could all possess an Authoritarian Personality
• Adorno's theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic
• Authoritarian personality - strength


  milgram 35% resisted authority - cannot be explained by situational factors (each participant went through similar experiences) - Adrnos theory acknowledges willingness to obey varies person to person - explaining variations
• elms +milgram - obedient participants scored higher on F scale and obedient who refused were lower on F scale - higher on F scale participants also tended to dehumanize or hold more negative attitudes to learner
• Limitation of authoritarian personality


  link between abusive childhood - the development of authoritarian personality - and obedience

  only studied using correlation - other explanations are backed up through experiments