Authoritarian personality

Question 1

A03: theory itself may be subject to research bias.

Answer 1

• This is because it presumes that the authoritarian personality is exclusively limited to right wing individuals
• However in study Conway devised scale to measure dogmatic and authoritarian views in left wing individuals
• found parallel with Adorno’s results indicating that left-wing individuals are just as likely to display authoritarian traits as right wing individuals
• therefore may be just as susceptible to obeying authority as right-wing individuals.
  -shows how expectations of researcher may skew our view of personality types that are likely to be associated with increased obedience
  -giving us a limited understanding.

Question 2

A03: research evidence to support the view that the authoritarian personality is linked to higher rates of obedience.

Answer 2

• Zillmer et al reported that 16 Nazi war criminals scored highly on three of the F Scale dimensions.
• Elms & Milgram found that highly obedient participants in Milgram’s study scored significantly higher on F-scale than the ess obedient pt.
• Both studies offer some support for the view that authoritarianism may lead to higher levels of obedience.
• However, Zillmer found only three of dimensions on the F-scale were relevant

Question 3

A03: research is correlational and therefore lacks internal validity

Answer 3

• difficulty establishing cause and effect link between authoritarian personality and obedience.
• Elms and Milgram’s study, cannot say that having authoritarian personality caused higher obedience b) there may have been another unaccounted for variable, or variables, that were responsible for both personality and obedience behaviour.
• authoritarian views of pt resulted from their experience of being part of Nazi regime, rather than other way round.
• These problems highlight the difficulty of establishing a dispositional basis of any behaviour such as obedience.