7 - Obedience: Dispositional Factors

Question 1

What is disposition?

Answer 1

Personality

Question 2

What is the dispositional explanation for obedience?

Answer 2

Some individuals have an authoritarian personality, whereby they are very obedient/submissive towards authority, and dismissive of their ‘inferiors’

Question 3

Who proposed the dispositional explanation for authority?

Answer 3

Adorno

Question 4

How did Adorno + Milgram’s views on obedience differ

Answer 4

Milgram - Believed that obedience was dependent on circumstance (situation + social-psychological factors)

Adorno - Believed that obedience was dependent on individual (dispositional factors)

Question 5

What are some qualities of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 5

• High respect for + willingness to obey superior authority
• Contemptuous + dismissive towards those they view as inferior in social status
• Unchanging conventional attitudes towards race + gender
• Clear view of society in a strict social hierarchy

Question 6

Who did research into dispositional explanations for obedience (the authoritarian personality)? When?

Answer 6

Adorno (1950)

Question 7

Outline Adorno’s 1950 research into dispositional explanations for obedience (the authoritarian personality)

Answer 7

Aim:
- To investigate whether obedience to authority (in events such as the Holocaust) was a result of dispositional or situational factors
Procedure:
- Over 2000 white white American men
- Measured extent of authoritarian personality and unconscious prejudices in ppts using the ‘F scale’
Findings:
- Average F scale score: 3.84
- Men scored higher than women
Conclusions:
- Authoritarian individuals identify with the ‘strong’ and are very contemptuous towards the ‘weak’
- They see society in a strict social hierarchy + are very conscious of their own position/social status

Question 8

How does the ‘F scale’ relate to obedience levels?

Answer 8

Milgram + Elms (1966)

• Found positive correlation between high score on F-scale (authoritarian personality) + high obedience in Milgram’s baseline study
• Concluded authoritarian people are most likely to obey those above them + expect obedience from those below them

Question 9

How did Adorno propose people develop an authoritarian personality?

Answer 9

An authoritarian personality is developed from strict parenting…

• Strict parenting causes child to have RESENTMENT + HOSTILE FEELINGS towards parents that they cannot express
• These feelings are DISPLACED onto those perceived to be inferior/weaker in society, in process of SCAPEGOATING, so they expect great submission from these inferiors

Question 10

What are characteristics of strict parenting (according to Adorno)?

Answer 10

• Expect obedience + loyalty
• Have impossibly high standards
• Severely criticise perceived failures
• Conditional love

Question 11

What is conditional love?

Answer 11

Love dependent on behaviour

Question 12

What approach did Adorno use in his explanation of the origin of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 12

Psychodynamic approach

Question 13

What are some issues with the F-Scale?

Answer 13

Methodology

• Greenstien (1969) is critical of method
• Scale worded in same direction
• May be ACQUIESCENCE BIAS (tendency to say yes in a self-report questionnaire)

Unrepresentative sample

• 2000 white, US males in 1950
• Lacks population validity + temporal validity
• Hard to generalise findings to everyone forever

Political bias

• Christie + Jahoda (1954) argue F scale only measures extreme right wing fascism
• Although these people are obedient, there are authoritarian, obedient people across the political spectrum
• Left wing authoritarianism exists (e.g. obedience to Mao in China) but is not accounted for on the scale

Question 14

Give 2 positive evaluation points for the dispositional explanation for obedience

Answer 14

Research support
- Milgram + Elm’s 1966 research supports idea that there is a positive correlation between high obedience + authoritarian traits

Holds people accountable
- Doesn’t blame situation, as Mandel (1998) argued situational + social-psychological factors did

Question 15

Give 2 negative evaluation points for the dispositional explanation for obedience

Answer 15

Uses correlations not causation

• Milgram + Elm’s (1966) found correlation between obedience + authoritarian personality
• Adorno found correlation between strict parenting + authoritarian personality
• So, the explanation for obedience and explanation for developing authoritarian traits cannot be proved through cause-effect
• May be a third intervening factor that is real explanation for obedience

Alternative explanations

• Millions of Germans obeyed in Holocaust
• All had different personalities
• Can’t all have had authoritarian personalities
• Must be other explanations for obedience that play a role (e.g. situational + social-psychological factors)