AO3 - Dispositional Explanation of Obedience

• Research to support the authoritarian personality was conducted by Milgram + Elms. They interviewed participants who had taken part in Milgram's experiment and asked them to complete the F-Scale questionnaire to measure their levels of authoritarianism. They found higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient (gave electric shocks to 450V) than those classified as defiant. Therefore suggesting that authoritarian personality is linked to obedience, supporting it as a dispositional explanation.
• Adorno's research can be criticised for social desirability as participants may have exaggerated their fascist views on the F-Scale questionnaire to present themselves in the best possible light. This is because when they completed the questionnaire (just after WW2 in 1950) they may have wanted to maximise their fascist views to look more obedient. Therefore Adorno may not be measuring what he intended to, reducing the internal validity of research into authoritarian personality.
• An alternative explanation for obedience is situational factors. This would argue that obedience is due to external factors, for example, obedience increases when the authority figure is wearing a uniform, rather than internal factors such as authoritarian personality where an individual has extreme respect due to strict parenting in childhood. Therefore suggesting that obedience may not just be due to internal factors, weakening the research into dispositional factors as an explanation for obedience as it is not the sole explanation.