12 - adorno ao3

Question 1

how did elms and milgram’s experiment on authoritarian personality and obedient participants provide research support for adorno? (strength)

Answer 1

sample was 20 obedient participants who administered 450 volts and 20 disobedient participants who refused to continue

each p completed personality questionnaires including adornos f scale to measure their level of authoritarian personality. also asked open ended questions about their relationship with their parents and experimenter and learner.

found that obedient participants scored higher on the f scale in comparison to disobedient ones

also showed that obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood and admired milgrams experimenter (opposite for disobedient participants)

Question 2

how does research by middendorp and meleon on eductaion level show counter evidence for adorno? (weakness)

Answer 2

they found that less educated people are more likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics than well educated people. if these claims are correct then it is possible to conclude that it is not authoritiarian personality that leads to obedience, but levels of education

Question 3

how is adornos f scale suffering from response bias and social desirability a weakness of his study? (lacking internal validity)

Answer 3

participants may have provided answers that are socially acceptable. for example, they may appear more authoritarian because they believe their answers are the socially correct ones and so are incorrectly classified (lacking internal validity)