Authoritarian Personality

Question 1

Dispositional explanation

Answer 1

Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of an individuals personality, such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations

Question 2

Authoritarian personality

Answer 2

A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying to people in authority, often submissive to those with higher position and dismissive of inferiors

Question 3

Adorno (1950)

Answer 3

Adorno and colleagues wanted to understand the anti Semitism of the holocaust, led them to draw very different conclusions to milgram.

They came to believe that a high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder

Question 4

Procedure

Study more than 2000 middle class white Americans and their conscious attitudes to other races

Developed several scales inc fascism (f scale) used to measure authoritarian personality

Answer 4

Findings

People with authoritarian learning- score high on f scale- associated with strong people and generally contemptuous of weak

Very concerned of their own and others status showing excessive respect to those of higher class

Strong positive correlation between those with authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 5

Authoritarian characteristics

Answer 5

Obedient to authority

They are inflexible in their outlook

Everything is either right or wrong they are uncomfortable with uncertainty

Question 6

Agentic state

A mental state where we feel no personal responsibility for our behaviour because we believe ourselves to be acting for an authority figure

Autonomous state

Opposite to agentic people are independent and act for their own principles

Answer 6

Evaluation
Research support- Blass and Schmidt showed a film of milgrams study to students, the students blamed the experimenter rather than the experiment for the harm

A limited explanation- doesn’t explain why some people didn’t obey

Question 7

Legitimacy of authority

Explanation for authority which suggests we are more likely to obey people who we perceive to have authority over us- social hierarchy

Destructive authority e.g. Hitler

Answer 7

Cultural differences- useful account of cultural differences in obedience e.g. Milgram study repeated in Australia and only 16% went all the volts whereas in Germany 85%

Real life crimes of obedience- Kelman and Hamilton argue that the My Lai massacre can be understood in terms of power hierarchy of the US army