Dispositional Explanations For Obedience

Question 1

What is dispositional?

Answer 1

• Explanation of behaviour that is caused by the individual’s own personality traits or characteristics rather than situational influences within the environment

Question 2

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 2

• A distinct personality pattern characterised by a strong adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience to authority

Question 3

What are characteristics of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 3

• Typically submissive to authority figures
• Hold contempt for the low status
• Have an inflexible outlook on life
• Have a tendency to view the world as purely black or white, right or wrong

Question 4

How is the authoritarian personality formed and how is it measured?

Answer 4

• Is formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting. This is especially true for children being subjected to conditional love
• It is measured using the ‘F-scale’

Question 5

What is fascism?

Answer 5

• An ideology that is authoritarian, anti-democratic, ultra-nationalist and usually racist

Question 6

What is conditional love?

Answer 6

• When parents only show love when the child behaves as expected

Question 7

What are the effects of conditional love?

Answer 7

• It creates fear and hostility towards the parents but instead of actually confronting the parents’ behaviour, the child represses these feelings and displaces them onto people they see as weaker or inferior

Question 8

Outline Adorno Key Study

Answer 8

• Adorno et al (1950) aimed to investigate the causes of the obedient personality using more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
• Several scales were developed including the F-scale
• He found that people with authoritarian leanings, those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures, identified with ‘strong’ people and were contemptuous towards the ‘weak’. They were very conscious of their own and others’ status, showing excessive respect 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

Question 9

What are evaluation points for Adorno et al’s Key Study?

Answer 9

• Supported By Research (+)
• There Are Alternative Explanations For Obedience (-)
• Measured Using The F-scale

Question 10

Explain the evaluation point ‘Supported By Research’

Answer 10

• A strength of the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience is that it is supported by research
• Elms & Milgram interviewed participants from Milgram’s original obedience study. They found that 20 fully obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than 20 disobedient participants, indicating stronger authoritarian traits
• This is a strength as it supports Adorno et al’s theory that people with an authoritarian personality are more likely to obey authority figures
• Therefore strengthening the validity of the dispositional explanation for obedience

Question 11

Explain the evaluation point ‘There Are Alternative Explanations For Obedience’

Answer 11

• A limitation of the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience is that it is an over-simplistic explanation for obedience
• This explanation only considers an individual’s personality and ignores alternative explanations such as Milgram’s situational explanations for obedience. Milgram argued that factors like the uniform and proximity of the authority figure significantly influence obedience
• This is a limitation because it may be that these situational variables have a greater influence on obedience levels
• Therefore this questions the validity of the authoritarian personality as a complete explanation for obedience

Question 12

Explain the evaluation point ‘Measured Using The F-scale’

Answer 12

• A limitation of the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience is that it is measured using the F-scale
• Greenstein (1969) criticises the F-scale, calling it ‘a comedy of methodological errors’ because it’s possible to score high simply by selecting ‘agree,’ leading to an inaccurate assessment of an authoritarian personality
• This is a limitation because the way in which it is measured may not generate valid results from participants and so research supporting the authoritarian personality may be based upon flawed methodology
• Therefore this limits the validity and usefulness of the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience