Dispositional Explanations

• Dispositional explanation:

  any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of an individual's personality ​
• Authoritarian personality: 


  A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.​
• Authoritarian Characteristics ​

  • Very obedient to authority ​
  • Extreme respect for people in authority ​
  • Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender​
  • We need strong powerful leaders to enforce rational values ​
  • They are inflexible in their views
• What are some negative effects of having this personality type?

  Can have insecurities towards social change and unconventional people (who they may view as a threat).
• What did Adorno construct and when?

  The F-scale questionnaire, in 1950, as a way to measure an individual's degree of authoritarian personality based on how much they agree with a series of statements. for example "respect for authority is the most important thing a child can learn".
• What did Adorno believe regarding AP?

  Authoritarian personalities are formed in early childhood as a result of authoritarian parenting by strict or controlling people.

  These people grow up insecure which makes them fearful of social change and non conventional people.
• Research Support: Elms and Milgram (1966)

  found that highly obedient participants in Milgram's study were significantly more authoritarian of the F scale than disobedient participants. This matters as it shows a link between authoritarian personality type and obedience, therefore increasing the validity of the dispositional explanation.
• Research Support: Altemeyer (1988)


  found that individuals with an authoritarian personality type ,who were ordered to shock themselves, gave higher shocks than those without. Suggests that authority has more power over those with an authoritarian personality.
• What is a methodological limitation of the F scale?

  The F-scale has response bias, which means people may be responding to factors in the questionnaire, rather than the questions themselves.

  For example, if you agreed with all statements you scored highly - yet some people may just like agreeing with statements!
• How did Altemeyer reduce the response bias?

  produced a less biased Right Wing Authoritarian scale in 1981 which had an equal number of pro and anti statements. His findings suggested that people who define themselves on the right of the political spectrum would be more likely to obey authority so we might expect people who define themselves as left wing to be less obedient. 
• Support for Altemeyer's Authoritarian scale

  Begue et al. (2014) found that ppts who defined themselves as left wing gave lower intensity (fake) shocks to another ppt. Supports the idea that the disposition of authoritarian personality plays a role in obedience.
• Elms and Milgram (1966): Procedure

  
  

  • Sample consisted of 20 obedient participants, who administered the full 450 volts and 20 disobedient participants, who refused to continue.
  • Each participant completed several personality questionnaires, including Adorno’s F scale, to measure their level of authoritarian personality.
  • participants were also asked open-ended questions about their relationship with their parents and their relationship with the experimenter and learner, during Milgram’s experiment.
• Elms and Milgram concluded that the obedient participants in his original research displayed higher levels of the authoritarian personality, in comparison to disobedient participants.
• Strengths of Dispositional Explanations

  • Research support - Elms and Milgram interviewed some of Adorno’s original participants. Found that the 20 obedient participants had a much higher F-score than 20 disobedient participants. This supports Adorno’s view that obedient people show authoritarian personality.
• Adorno (1950)

  • 2000 middle-class Americans ​
  • Studied their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups ​
  • They created different scales including a fascism scale (F-scale)​
  • List of statements which you rate from a scale of 1 disagree strongly to 6 agree strongly
• Adorno (1950): Findings

  • People who scored highly on the F-scale identified with strong people and were generally contemptuous of the weak​
  • Very conscious of their own and others status, showing excessive respect to those of higher status ​
  • There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarian and prejudice
• Origin of the authoritarian personality ​

  • These people instead displace their fears onto others who they see as weaker ​
  • This explains the trait of obedience to higher authority which is a dislike for people considered to be socially inferior
• Weaknesses of Dispositional Explanations


  • Countering supporting research - found that obedient participants had differing ideals than the usual authoritarian, such as a lack of glorification of their father and a lack of hostility towards their mothers.
  • Limited application - cannot explain obedience in a populations. It is unlikely everyone in Germany at the time was authoritarian, which limits this explanation.
• Weaknesses of Dispositional Explanations(2)

  • Political bias - the F-scale only measures extreme right wing views, despite both sides of the political spectrum holding similar views on authority.
  • Response bias - it is possible to have a high F-score by selecting agree for every answer. Anyone who has response bias can be wrongly marked as authoritarian.