Dispositional Explanations

Question 1

What is dispositional explanation of obedience also known as?

Answer 1

The authoritarian personality

Question 2

What is dispositional explanation?

Answer 2

Explanation of behaviour that is influenced by the indvidiual’s personality

Question 3

What is an authoritarian personality?

Answer 3

• A personality type who is very obedient to those who have power over them

Question 4

What happens to someone with authoritarian personality?

Answer 4

• Extreme respect for authoirty
• They are very respectful to those who have higher authority power
• Maybe submissive to those who are inferior
• They believe we should have a strong/powerful leaders and very inflexibile in their outlook
• Everything is either right or wrong
• The authoritian personality is measured on F-scale

Question 5

What is the aim of Adorno?

Answer 5

To investigate the causes of obedient behaviour

Question 6

What is the procedure?

Answer 6

• Several scales were developed including potential for facism (F-scale)
• e.g Questions and statements produced -report from 1-6 to agree
  
  • ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtue for children to learn’

Question 7

What did Adorno wanted to see?

Answer 7

• Investigate the unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups of more than 2000-middle class white Americans

Question 8

What are the findings?

Answer 8

Those who scored high on F-scale were characterised as showing excessive respect and obedient to those of higher status

Also had strong, distinctive opnions about other groups

There was a strong correlation between personality type and obedience

Question 9

What is the conclusion?

Answer 9

State what authoritian personality is

Question 10

Limitation

Authoritian personality limited

Answer 10

• Millions of indvididuals in Germany displayed obedient and anti-Semantic behaviour - did not have the same personalitiy
• Seems unlikely the majority of German population possessed an authoritian personality
• An alternative explanation is social identiy theory
• Most Germans identified with anti-Semantic Nazi state and adopted its views

Question 11

Limitation

Research uses correlation

Answer 11

• Adorno measured many variables and found significant correlations between them (e.g authoritianism correlated to prejudice against minority groups)

No matter how strong a correlation is between two variables , it does not mean a casual relationship

Therefore, Adorno could not claim harsh parenting style caused development of authoritiarian personality

Question 12

Limitation

F-scale is biased

Answer 12

• Christie and Jahoda suggest F-scale aims to measure tendency towards extreme right-wind ideology
• But right-wing and left-wing (e.g Chinese Maoism) both insist on complete obedience to political authority
• Adorno’s theory is not comprehensive dispositional explanantion to obedience to authority becaue it doesn’t explain left-wing obedience i.e. it is politically biased

Question 13

Strength

Link between authoritian personality and obedience

Answer 13

• Elms and Milgram interviewed fully obedient particpants and scored highly on F-scale
• However, this is just a correlation between measured variables. We cannot conclude that authoritian personaliy cause obedience
• A ‘third factor; may be invovled. Both obedence and authoritian personality causd by a lower level of education (Hyman and Sheatsely)

Question 14

Discuss authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience

Answer 14

• Explain Adorno’sproduce
• AO3