Dispositional Explanation for Obedience Flashcards
What type of explanation for obedience is it?
Internal
What does it focus on?
That individual personality traits can be linked with higher levels of obedience
HOW IT DEVELOPS
The authoritarian personality is a collection of personality traits said to develop from strict
parenting during an individual’s childhood, making them more obedient to authority figures in order to AVOID punishment
WHAT IS IT?
The personality traits include showing extreme respect for perceived authority and
submission to people in perceived authority as they see them as superior
. Therefore increasing their obedience rates.
Furthermore they have black and white thinking and strictly follow social rules and hierarchies
HOW IS IT MEASURED?
The authoritarian personality was assessed using the F-Scale questionnaire.
Those who scored highly on the questionnaire displayed the characteristics described above, and are
found to be more obedient.
Research to support the authoritarian personality was conducted by
Milgram
Procedure of what Milgram did
interviewed participants who had taken part in Milgram’s experiment and asked them to complete
the F scale questionnaire to measure their levels of authoritarianism.
FIndings of Milgram’s work on the authoritarian personality
higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient (who gave electric shocks to 450V) compared to those that didn’t
Criticism of the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience
It is a limited explanation as it is difficult to use personality as an explanation for obedience in most of a country’s population.
In pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic
behaviour.
It is likely that all these individuals would have differed somewhat in their personalities
and very unlikely that they all possessed an authoritarian personality, thus casting doubt on the
authoritarian (dispositional) explanation of obedience.
