Discuss dispositional explanations of obedience 16 marks

• A01 - What is the authoritarian personality

  • a personality where people show extreme respect for people in authority.
  • they view society as weaker than it once was, so believe we need powerful leaders to enforce traditional views
  • they are conscious of status
  • there are no grey areas, there is a right and wrong way. therefore people who are 'others' (different ethnic group) are responsible for the ills of society.
• A01 - Origins of authoritarian personality

  • Adorno believed it was formed in childhood, due to harsh parenting.
  • because parents were very strict and expected high standards of them.
  • Adorno believed that these childhood experiences created resentment towards the parent,
  • but because the child was scared of their parent they wouldn't be able to express these feelings.
  • their fears got displaced onto others (scapegoating) who were perceived to be weaker
  • this is why they have hatred towards people who are considered socially inferior.
• A01 - What scale did Adorno use to measure AP?

  • Used F-scale
  • F = Fascism
  • eg respect and obedience are the most important values for a child to learn.
  • People had to choose on a Likert scale how much they agree with the statement
  • People who scored highly on F-scale showed great respect for people with high social status.
  • identified with “strong” people and disliked “weak” people.
• how many people were in Adornos research

  2000 middle class white American males
• A03

  Strength - research support


  • Milgram and Elms found a link between fully obedient people and high scorers on the F-scale.
  • interviewed some of the participants who had taken part in Milgram studies
  • found that those that had shocked to the full 450v scored higher on the F scale than those who had refused to continue.
  • This shows that Milgram’s research supports Adorno’s ideas.
• A03

  Limitation - limited explanation


  • in Germany pre war, the majority of people were obedient and had very right wing views/antisemitic.
  • it is impossible to generalise and say that all of them had the authoritarian personality.
  • we need to come up with a better explanation as to why people obey as it is too simplistic to put it down to just a personality
  • majority of germans identified with nazi state
  • scapegoated the out group of jews
• A03

  Limitation - methodological problems


  • Response bias - can get a high score simply by agreeing to everything
  • Doesn't measure AP correctly
  • Not valid way of measurement as its flawed
• A03

  Limitation - correlational not causation


  • An issue with this is that the finding is correlational.
  • Correlation is not causation.
  • They cannot find a cause and effect between the two variables
  • It may not be that people with authoritarian personalities are more likely to follow orders.
  • It could be that people on lower incomes are both more likely to follow orders out of desperation to please and thus also score more highly on the F scale.
  • giving it a limited explanation