Dispositional Explanation Flashcards
(10 cards)
Authoritarian personality
Adorno et al. argued that people with an authoritarian personality:
-Show respect for authority
-view society as weaker than it once was
-believe we need a strong and powerful leader to enforce traditional values.
- More likely to obey.
- show hatred for those of inferior social status.
-Everything is right or wrong, uncomfortable with uncertainty.
- people who are ‘other’ e.g. different ethnic groups, are responsible for the ills of society. E.g. Nazi germany and Jews.
Adorno et al, argued that people with an Authoritarian Personality (AP) first of all show an extreme respect for (and submissiveness to) authority. Second, such people view society as ‘weaker’ than it once was, so believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country and family. Both of these characteristics make people with an Authoritarian Personality more likely to obey orders from a source of authority.
People with Authoritarian Personalities also show contempt for those of inferior social status. This is fuelled by their inflexible outlook on the world - for them there are no grey areas. Everything is either right or wrong and they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. Therefore people who are ‘other’ (e.g. belong to a different ethnic group) are responsible for the ills of society. ‘Other’ people are a convenient target for
authoritarians who are likely to obey orders from authority figures even when such orders are destructive (as in Nazi Germany).
Origins of the authoritarian personality
Adorno et al. Believed the authoritarian personality type forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting. Have high standards, absolute loyalty, criticise when fail and give conditional love.
Adorno said that this caused the child to feel resentment and hostility, but the child cannot express these feelings towards the parents, due to fear of punishment. Fears are displaced onto other, weaker members of society. Psychodynamic explanation.
Adorno et al. believed the Authoritarian Personality type forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting. This parenting style typically features extremely strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism of perceived failings. Parents give conditional love - that is, their love and affection for their child depends entirely on how he or she behaves (‘I will love you if …).
Adorno et al. argued that these childhood experiences create resentment and hostility in a child. But the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because they fear punishment. So their fears are displaced onto others who they perceive to be weaker, in a process known as scapegoating. This explains the hatred towards people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups, a central feature of obedience to a higher authority. This is a psychodynamic explanation.
Adorno et al’s research
Procedure- Adorno et al(1950) studied more than 2000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards ethnic groups. Researchers developed potential for fascism scale (F-Scale) to measure authoritarian personality.
Examples of items on F-scale
Two examples of items from the F-scale are: Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn, and ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents.
Findings of adornos research
People with high F-scale score identify with strong people, hate weak, conscious of status. Adorno found strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice of groups.
Findings People with authoritarian leanings (i.e. those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’
people and were generally contemptuous of the weak. They were very
conscious of status (their own and others’) and showed extreme respect, deference and servility to those of higher status - these traits are the basis of obedience.
Adorno et al. also found that authoritarian people had a certain cognitive style (way of perceiving others) in which there was no fuzziness’ between categories of people (i.e. black and white thinking). They had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups. Adorno et al. found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
Strength- research support
Evidence from Milgram supporting the authoritarian personality. Elms and Milgram interviewed a small sample of people who had been fully obedient. All completed F-scale as part of interview. These 20 obedient participants scores significantly higher of F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants. Two groups quite clearly different in terms of authoritarianism.Support Adornos view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian personality.
Counterpoint- researchers analysed results, found obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians. E.g. didn’t glorify fathers, not unusual levels of punishment in childhood and didn’t have particularly hostile attitudes towards mothers.
Limitation- limited explanation
Authoritarianism cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a countries population. E.g. pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour . Despite the fact they must have differed in personality. Couldn’t all possess an authoritarian personality
Alternative view is that the majority of German people identified with anti-Semitic Nazi state,and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews.a social identity theory (SID).
Therefore Adornos theory is limited because an alternate explanation is much more realistic.
Limitation- political bias
Political bias
Another limitation is that the F-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology.
Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda (1954) argued that the F-scale is a politically-biased interpretation of Authoritarian Personality. They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism. In fact, extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have a lot in common. For example they both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authority.
This means Adorno’s theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that accounts for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum.
social desirability bias
Finally, Elms and Milgram used Adorno’s F scale to determine levels of authoritarian personality. It is possible that the F scale suffers from response bias or social desirability, where participants provide answers that are socially acceptable. For example, participants may appear more authoritarian because they believe that their answers are the socially ‘correct’ and consequently they are incorrectly classified as authoritarian when they are not.
intro
Like Milgram, Theodor Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand the anti-Semitism of the Holocaust.
Their research led them to draw very different conclusions from Milgram’s. They believed that a high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder (i.e. pathological). They believed that the causes of such a disorder lie in the personality of the individual rather than in the situation, i.e. it is a dispositional explanation.
