dispositional explanations : authortarian personality

• dispositional explanation = internal explanation eg. personality factors
• authortarian personality - Adorno: he believed that the foundation for an authortarian personality were laid in early childhood because of harsh and strict parenting. This creates resentment as they grow up, can't express it at the time, feelings displaced onto others seen as 'weak' or 'inferior'.
• Adorno created a study using 2000 middle class caucasian americans to find unconscious views towards other racial groups by developing a number of questionnaires including the F scale - facist tendencies. high F scale = strong emphasis on obedience and grown up in an authortarian family.
• • supporting research. Milgram & Elms, post experimental interviews with participants who were fully obedient in Milgram's study. Found obedient pp scored higher on the F scale.
• • individual differences, Middendorp & Meleon - found less educated people more likely to display an authortarian personality. It is possible that the authortarian personality doesn't alone lead to obedience but education too.
• • methodological issue, F scale may suffer from response bias or social desirability bias, reduces internal validity of questionnaire.
• • little ecological validity, can't explain real life examples of mass obedience eg. unlikely whole german population during nazi occupation had an authortarian personality but more likely they pushed their struggles on to 'inferior' group.