14. Obedience: Dispositional Explanations AO1 Flashcards
Name a dispositional explanation of obedience
The authoritarian personality
What did Adorno et al originally want to know
Wanted to understand the prejudice against Jews in the holocaust
What did Adorno et al believe?
Unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder
What does someone with an authoritarian personality behave like (3)?
- Exaggerated respect for authority
- Express contempt for inferior social status
- Have conventional attitudes towards race and gender
What did Adorno et al say about authoritarians
People with authoritarian personalities are especially obedient to authority
Where does an authoritarian personality originate from
Forms in childhood through:
- harsh parenting
- extremely strict discipline
- expectations of loyalty
- impossibly high standards
- sever criticism
Explain conditional love
Parents love depends entirely on how their child behaves
What does harsh childhood experience lead to
Create resentment and hostility in child - they can’t express these feelings direct to parents - fear of reprisals
What is scapegoating
Feelings are displace onto others - seen as weaker - can’t express feelings to parents - fear of reprisals
What was the Aim of Adorno et als study
To investigate unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
What did Adorno develop
Potential of fascism scale - F-scale
Give two examples from the F-scale
- ‘Obedience/respect for authority - most important thing to learn’
- ‘Hardly anything lower than someone who doesn’t respect parents’
What did Adorno find using the F-scale
Authoritarians (who scored high on F-scale) identified with strong people - contemptuous of the weak - conscious of own others status - showed excessive respect of people with higher status
What did Adorno conclude about people with authoritarian personalities (using the f-scale)
Authoritarian people also had cognitive style - no fuzziness between categories of people - distinct stereotypes about other groups
What did Adorno et al aim to find out about obedience
tried to find the cause of obedience (psychological disorder) in the individual’s personality
