Evaluate The Influence Of Personality Individual Differences On Obedience 8 Mark Question Flashcards
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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(basic of Authoritarian personality)
Personality and individual differences have a limited effect on obedience due to research on theories supporting it having bad research and research against it
Authoritarian personality Theory is a freudian based dispositional Theory suggested by adorno (1954)
It suggests that people with this personality (which was created by strict parents who beat it their children when they disobeyed) are more likely to respect
authority, be blindly obedient and believe in extreme punishment and beliefs in mistreating “weak” lower social classes than they and anyone who they perceive as different.
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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elms and milgram
vets shot bad parents
A study that supports this theory is Elms and milgram (1966)
- they interviewed two groups two months after a study with variations
- the define group (which stopped the experiment)
- the obedient group (which continued the experiment)
- both consisted of 20 participants each
- the obedient group had poor relations with their father EG beatings
- most were veterans: nearly every obedient said that they had shot a man showing they are more willing to punish those who they beleive did wrong
- every defiant subject who was a veteran denied it
This shows that the obedient group possibly had authoritarian personalities as they show key characteristics and relations with parents
- therefore this is evidence to support authoritarian personality Theory as it shows obedient ppts fitting the typical traits and relations of Authoritarian personalitys
It also therefore shows the clear link between authoritarian personality theory and obedience
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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f- scale
Authoritarian personality is decided on by an f-scale score a high score means that they are more likely to have an authoritarian personality
Items on this scales questionnaire includes weather or not the partisipant agrees, strongly agrees, disagrees, strongly disagree etc
” people can be divided into two distinct classes the weak and the strong”
This scale was developed by adorno
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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circular f scale
This f scale was developed by adorno
this is a circular explanation as he subjectivly selected people he believed to have authoritarian personality traits, interviewed 2000 of them and then correlated these traits in the results to find out what authoritarian personality traits were ( anti-semitism, ethnocentricism, political–economic conservatism, potentially fascist etc.)
Essentially meaning he found only what he was looking for and may have missed other factors such as low education
This means that the f scale created by adorno is poor research to support authoritarian personality Theory as extraneous variables and confounding variables may have been overlooked decreasing the studies internal validity
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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LOC overview
Locas of control is a concept by rotter (1966)
- stating that some personalities believe they are entirely in control of their actions (high internal loc perceived as disobediant)
- what others believe their destinies control by look and Fate (high external loc perceived as helpless to stress so more likely to give in and obey authority figures to reduce stress)
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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LOC vs Agency Theory (Loc win)
Comparing locus of control to agency Theory it is clear that
-It is extremely difficult to determine objectivly when somebody is in an agentic state and when the agentic shift occurs
- whereas rotter created a questionnaire to determine if somebody had a internal or external locus of control making it objectively measurable
- this therefore means that locus of control is a more accurate and internaly valid (objective based on facts not bias oppinions) way of determining if somebody is more obedient or not than agency Theory meaning that it is a better Theory on obedience than agency Theory
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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eco agency vietcong and nazis
However when comparing authoritarian personality Theory to Agency Theory
- it becomes clear that agency theory can be successfully applied to real life situations for example
-another example is the my lai massacre
- 16 March 1968 during the Vietnam War soldiers of the Charlie company followed orders to slaughter the small innocent Vietnamese village of my lai killing approximately 500 people
- the Charlie company had the agenic shift when the orders came in to “deal with them” and were in the agentic state when carrying out the orders
Showing that agency theory can be applied to understand why a historical event occurred and to show it can occur in real life
wheras Authoritarian Personality Theory cannot be accurately applied to real life to explain why an historical event happened
For example the theory cannot be used to explain the mass blind obedience of Germans to Nazis during World War 2 as it is extremely unrealistic and unlikely that most Germans had authoritarian personalities
Due to agency Theory both explaining and showing a real-life example and showing that agency Theory exist in real life it has higher ecological validity than authoritarian personality Theory which failed to do so
Meaning that agency Theory is a better explanation on obedience than authoritarian personality
Evaluate influence of Personality (individual differences) on obedience 8 marks
Question plan
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In conclusion personality has an extremely limited effect on obedience
-as a large amount of research that has been done on both theories was either poor research of supporting evidence
- such as the aforementioned F scale and milgram 1974 being a lab study and therefore is unable to confirm if locus of control has an effect on obedience in real life
- research against theories all together such as Hyman ans Sheatsley 1954 finding low education to be more likley explenation of High F-scale scores than Authoritarianism
- and Schurz 1985 who did not find a significant relationship between locus of control and obedience
- therefore overall the influence of personality on obedience is limited by research on it and research against it
However Personality has aplications
As A High internal locus of control and a Authoritarian personality would make a good military, with High Internal LOC being a good leader and sucessfull under stress and pressure they would make good Generals
Whereas Authoritarian personalitys would show respect to the higher rank and follow orders from them
showing personality can be applied to the military
