Dispositional Obedience: Authoritarian Personality

• outline Adorno (1950)

  - studied personality questionnaires

  - developed the F scale: measurong 9 factors related to Authoritarian Personality
• results, Adorno

  - people who scored highly on the F scale showed high respect for people with higher social status, had fixed stereotypes, identified with 'strong' people and disliked 'weak' people

  - Adorno suggested these people had their personality shaped early in life by authoritarian parenting (harsh physical/psychological punishments)
• A03: Authoritarian Personality

  - interviewed ppts of Milgram: ppts who shocked to full 450v scored high on F scale than those who refused to continue

  - link between authoritarian personality and following orders is correlational, could be influenced by strict parenting, low income, poor education

  - lacks internal validity: all questions were written in one direction, seen as a left-wing theory and inherently biased