Dispositional explanations of obedience

Question 1

What is an authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

A person who has extreme unquestioning respect and obedience towards authority figures

Question 2

What is fascism?

Answer 2

The political idea that one’s nation and race are superior to all others

Question 3

Key Study: Adorno et al.

Answer 3

Adorno et al 1950
Aim: Find out peoples unconscious views towards other racial groups.

Method: Adorno developed a number of questionnaires including the F-scale which measures fascist tendencies since fascism is considered to be the core of the authoritarian personality

Results: People who scored highly on the F-scale and other questionnaires self-reported themselves as ‘strong’ people and showed disrespect to the ‘weak’, and also showed excessive respect to those in higher power.

Conclusion: Individuals with an authoritarian personality were more obedient to authority figures and showed extreme submissiveness and respect. They had inflexible attitudes with everything being either right or wrong, no middle ground.

Question 4

Evaluate the authoritarian personality

Answer 4

• It is possible that the F-scale suffers from response bias. Participants may appear more authoritarian because they believe that their answers are socially ‘correct’ so they are incorrectly classified as authoritarian when they are not. This reduces the internal validity of the questionnaires used to determine the degree of authoritarianism.