Dispositional Explanation Flashcards
What does dispositional explanation mean
It is any behaviour hat highlights the importance of the individuals personality
What type of personality is within the dispositional explanations of obedience
Authoritarian personality
Who researched the authoritarian personality
Adorno
Why is the authoritarian personality a dispositional explanation rather than a situational explanation
Because Adorno believed that the cause of the disorder lied in individual personality rather than the situation
What did Adorno claim was a more likely reason to obey an authority
A particular personality type
What type of disorder is a high level of obedience?
Psychological disorder (pathological)
What are the characteristics that Adorno concluded those with an authoritarian personality to have when being obedient
● Have exaggerated respect for authority and submissiveness to it.
● Express contempt for people of inferior social status.
● Have conventional attitudes towards race and gender.
How does Authoritarian personality form in childhood years
● Harsh parenting, extremely strict discipline, expectations of absolute loyalty, high standard (impossible) and severe criticism.
● It is based on conditioned love (love depends on how they behave)
Who is hostility usually displaced onto?
Those who are socially inferior
Why can’t children who have experiences that create resentment and hostility not express their feelings directed to their parents
Because of fear of reprisals- act of retaliation
Since children can’t express their resentment and hostility to their parents, where are there feelings displaced to?
○ To those who are weaker - scapegoating
○ This explains hatred of people who are socially inferior (psychodynamic)
What is the F-scale by Adorno
measures responses on several different components of authoritarianism
What does the F in F-scale stand for
Fascist
What does fascist mean
someone who believes in a totalitarian state rule by a supreme leader (dictator) who controls everything possible and treats people harshly
What was the aim of Adornos research
He wanted to investigate the cause of an obedient personality within personalities
How many people did Adorno investigate
More than 2000
What type of people did Adorno do his study on
Middle aged Americans
What did Adorno research about his participants
Their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
What did Adorno research about his participants
Their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
What was the role of the F-scale
measure the relationship between a person’s personality type and prejudiced beliefs
What did those who scored highly on the F-scale identify with
they identified with strong people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’
what was the cognitive style of the high scorers on the F-scale
.no ‘grey areas’ between categories of people
.fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
.strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
what are the 2 main limitations of dispositional explanations
.Explanation is limited
.the research uses correlations
why is ‘limited explanations’ a limitation of dispositional explanations
because millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and anti-semitic behaviour - but did not have the same personality which shows that it seems unlikely the majority of Germany’s population possessed and authoritarian personality
why is ‘using correlation research’ a limitation of dispositional explanations
Adorno measured many variables and found significant correlations between them (authoritarianism correlated with prejudice against minority groups.
No matter how strong a correlation between two variables is, it does not mean one that one causes the other.
Therefore Adorno could not claim that harsh parenting style caused development of an authoritarian personality.
What is the strength of dispositional explanations
There is support for the link between authoritarian personality and obedience.
Elms and Milgram (1966) interviewed fully obedient participants - all scored highly on the f-scale.
what is the counterpoint of the strength of dispositional explanations
However, this link is just a correlation between measured variables. We cannot conclude from this that authoritarian personality causes obedience.
A ‘third factor’ may be involved. Both obedience and authoritarian personality may be caused by a lower level of education
