Individual Difference and Developmental factors for obedience

Question 1

Individual difference: Personality

Answer 1

• Authoritarian Personality described by Adorno to be rigid in their thinking, obedient to authority, see the world in black and white and adhering to social hierarchy and rules therefore being more obedient
• Strict parenting and the idea of punishment can lead to scapegoating others

Question 2

Explanation of Authoritarian Personality

Answer 2

• People who were raised very harshly develop a personality to submit to authority
• This is caused by parents who have a psychological need for domination and who harshly threaten their child to comply
• Child then suffers from their suppression of feeling of aggression towards their parents
• They grow up to follow rules, social status and is more obedient to those above them but have a distaste towards those who don’t fit in and become harsh and oppressive towards them

Question 3

Strength of Authoritarian Personality

Answer 3

• A strength of Authoritarian Personality is research support
• Alan Elms and Milgram used the F scale with participants from Milgram’s studies. They tested 20 fully obedient participants to 20 who were not
• Obedient participants scored higher on the F scale and also reported other characteristics of the authoritarian personality
• These finding suggest that obedience is related to the personality characteristic of authoritarianism

Question 4

Weakness of Authoritarian Personality

Answer 4

• We cannot claim that there is a causal relationship between childhood experiences and authoritarianism because these are correlations
• Other factors may be involved for example obedience and authoritarian personality may be caused by a lower level of education

Question 5

Locus of Control

Answer 5

• External Locus of Control is someone who believe they have no control over the world and feel that external factors and chance factors that lead to their behaviour so they tend to take less responsibility and blame other more for their action
• Internal Locus of Control is someone who believe they are the ones who are in control so take more responsibility for their action
• External LOC are more obedient

Question 6

Weakness of LOC

Answer 6

• A weakness of LOC if from Grete Schurz
• In a task similar to Milgram’s original study, Austrian participants were instructed to give painful doses of ultrasound to a female student
• Those who were fully obedient didn’t differ significantly from those participants who resisted in terms of their scores on a questionnaire measing locus of control
• This suggest personality may have little impact on obedience