dispositional factor Flashcards
Briefly introduce the basic idea behind dispositional factors of obedience.
High levels of obedience is a psychological disorder, caused by an individual’s personality.
Outline the key study into dispositional factors.
Adorno et al. (1950) - causes of the obedient personality. 2000 middle class white Americans -studied unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. Used the F-Scale to measure the authoritarian personality. High scorers on the F-scale identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak, conscious of their own status, showing excessive respect to those of a higher status. Very black and white with high levels of prejudice and stereotypes beliefs.
Outline 2 conclusions of Adorno’s study.
People with an authoritarian personality have/are: Very obedience to authority; have an extreme respect for authority and are submissive to it; are contemptuous of people with an “inferior” social status; have very conventional views; are inflexible; believe we need to be strong and powerful.
What was suggested by Adorno about the origin of the authoritarian personality.
Harsh parenting - strict discipline, high standards, loyalty, criticisms, conditional love.
Creates resentment and hostility which cannot be expressed and so is displaced.
Outline the research support for the authoritarian personality provided by Elms (1966).
Elms and Milgram conducted interviews with people who scored highly of the F-Scale, believing there may be a link to obedience.
However links are only correlational and give us no real link of causality.
There could be a third factor involved, e.g. lower levels of education (Hyman & Sheatsley (1954).
Outline some of the methodological problems with research conducted into dispositional explanations.
Greenstein (1969) criticises the F-Scale for its methodological errors. E.g. all of the questions are worded in the same direction. This means you can get a high score just by giving the same answer repeatedly. The F-Scale therefore suffers from an acquiescence bias and interviewer bias because the interviewers knew the test scores and hypothesis. The Authoritarian personality has no basis in fact if the methodology used to asses it is flawed.
Explain why the authoritarian personality has been considered a limited explanation
Will find it hard to explain obedience in the majority of a country’s population. Pre-war Germany - lots of racist, hostile and anti-semitic behaviour - seems unlikely they all had an authoritarian personality. Limitation because it is clear a much more realistic alternative is possible - Social Identity Theory. The population identified with the anti-semitic state and thus behaved accordingly.
Why has it been argued that explanations using the authoritarian personality are politically biased?
The F-Scale measures tendencies towards an extreme right wing ideology. Left wing ideologies actually have a lot in common with right wing ideologies e.g. the emphasis on complete obedience to a legitimate authority figure. It is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can be applied across the entire political spectrum.
