Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

Dispositional explanation for obedience

Answer 1

Authoritarian Personality (Adorno)

Question 2

Disposition

Answer 2

Any explanation for behaviour that highlights individuals personality

Question 3

Theodor Adorno

Answer 3

-Wanted to understand Holocaust
-Believed high obedience was a psychological disorder
-Believed obedience was due to personality, not situation
-Believe people with authoritarian personality showed extreme respect and submissive to authority, so were more likely to obey

Question 4

Origins of authoritarian personality

Answer 4

• formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting
• raised with strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, high standards, and criticism of any perceived failings
• conditional love dependent on behaviour

-Fear and hostility can’t be expressed so are displaced onto others, especially those seen as inferior
-Psychodynamic explanation -Freud

Question 5

Adorno’s research

Answer 5

-Devised ‘f-scale’ (F for fascism) to measure authoritarian personality
-Studied 2000 middle-class white Americans
-Wanted to find unconscious attitudes towards racial groups

-Found that those who scored highly had characteristics of an authoritarian personality

Question 6

Characteristics of Authoritarian personality

Answer 6

-Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender
-See things as right or wrong, and are uncomfortable -with uncertainty
-Want strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country, religion and family
-Inflexible in their outlook
-Contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status
-Very conscious of their status
-Extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it
-Had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
-Positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 7

Research support for authoritarian personality

Answer 7

Elms and Milgram (1966) - interviewed small numbers of original participants, found the obedient participants scored higher on the F-scale than the disobedient
-HOWEVER - found that the obedient participants did not have qualities traditional of authoritarian personality, e.g. did not glorify fathers, did not have extreme levels of punishment in childhood and were not hostile to their mothers

Question 8

Limitation of authoritarian personality

Answer 8

-Can not explain majority of a county’s behaviour - e.g Nazi Germany
-Individuals were obedient to the Nazis - but could not have all had the same personality type
-Alternative theory - Nazis ideas were internalised (social identity theory)

-Based on extreme right-wing ideology, makes it culture bound
-Christine and Jahoda (1954) - politically biased view
-Left-wing ideology can also support complete obedience, e.g. Chinese Maoism
-Not a comprehensive explanation for all political views/across political spectrum