dispositional explanations for obedience

Question 1

who came up with the authoritarian personality

Answer 1

Adorno (1950)

Question 2

what did Adorno et al (1950) investigate

Answer 2

investigated the causes of obedient personalities / disposition in obedience

Question 3

what was the sample used

Answer 3

2000 middle class white americans

Question 4

why did Adorno want to investigate obedience

Answer 4

motivate like Milgram to explore obedience and also prejudice because of the events of the Holocaust
They believed that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder and tried to find its causes in the individual’s personality (disposition)

Question 5

what are the concepts of authoritarian personality

Answer 5

some people have an exaggerated respect for authority → they are far more likely to obey orders - submissive to it. they also look down on people of inferior social stays
it follows that such personality types are very aware of their own and other people’s place in the social hierarchy and are very respectful of people of a higher social status

Question 6

what are the 3 factors of authoritarian personality

Answer 6

cognitive style
childhood origin
scapegoating

Question 6

what is scapegoating

Answer 6

Adorno also asserted that authoritarian people had a particular ‘cognitive style’ (way of thinking)
the authoritarian personality originated in childhood and that they tended to displace (redirect a threatening emotion from the person or thing that had caused it onto a third person) = scapegoating

Question 7

how is cognitive style a factor of authoritarian personality

Answer 7

authoritarian people have a particular style of thinking
they like thinks to be black and white - something is either good or bad

Question 8

how is childhood origins a factor of authoritarian personality

Answer 8

he proposed that the authoritarian personality is made rather than being born
it develops when a child experiences overly strict parenting - their parents exert strong discipling over their child

Question 9

how is scapegoating a factor of authoritarian personality

Answer 9

he proposed that people with hostility have a need to displace their anger onto something else
this relieves their anxiety and hostility

Question 10

what was the procedure

Answer 10

they developed several scales to investigate this - includes the potential fascism scale (the F-scale) which is used to measure authoritarian personality
meausured unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
measured potential for fascism

Question 11

what were the findings

Answer 11

those with authoritarian learnings (scored high on the F scale) identified with strong people and were generally contemptuous of the weak
they were very conscious of their own and other status, showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of higher status
Adorno et al also found that authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups → there was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 12

AO3 - limited explanation

Answer 12

in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals all displayed obedient, racist and anti- Semitic behaviour
it seems extremely unlikely that they all could posses an authoritarian personality and therefore Adorno’s theory cannot explain high levels of obedience → therefore another more realistic explanation is the social identity explanation is which most of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of the Jews.

Question 13

AO3 - political bias

Answer 13

the F-scale measured the tendency towards extreme forms of right-wing ideology
chistie and jahoda (1954) argued that it is a politically biased interpretation of AP
this is a limitation because it is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum

Question 14

AO3 - found correlations, not causation

Answer 14

adorno and colleagues measured a range of variables and found significant correlations between them. For example they found authoritarianism was strongly correlated with measures of prejudice against minority groups
however not matter how strong the correlation between two variables might be, it does not follow that one causes the other
shows that Adorno could not claim that a harsh parenting style caused the development of the authoritarian personality

Question 15

AO3 - methodological limitation - Greenstein

Answer 15

Greenstein (1969) describe the F scale as a comedy of methodological errors
the sacle has come in for several criticisms because every one of its items is worded in the same direction, making it possible to get a high score of authoritarianism just be ticking the same lines of boxes down one side of the page
people who agree with the items on the F-scale are therefore not necessarily authoritarian but acquiesces and the scale is just measuring the tendency to agree to everything
Adorno and colleagues interviewed the pp about childhood experiences, the researchers knew the pp’s test scores so knew which had authoritarian personalities, they also knew the hypothesis of the study
strong limitation is that it lacks external validity

Question 16

what were the conclusions to the experiment

Answer 16

authoritarian individuals have a tendency to be obedient to authority
dismissive of inferiors
inflexible on outlooks

Question 17

strength of Adorno’s theory

Answer 17

supporting research -Elms and Milgram (1966) looked at 20 people who administered 450 volts and 20 who didn’t in Milgram’s shock study and found a positive correlation between obedience scored and the F scale
suggests that it is a valid explanation for obedience
however the link is just a correlation between two measured variables which makes it hard to draw the conclusions that AP causes obedience on the basis of this result → Hyman and Sheatsley (1954) argued that AP and obedience are associated with lower levels of obedience

Question 18

what is the F-scale

Answer 18

it stands for potential facism. a questionnaire on a scale of 1-6 (strong disagree to strong agree). over 2000 white American male students took part

Question 19

what type of explanation is scapegoating

Answer 19

a psychodynamic explanation