L8 - dispositional explanations of obedience

Question 1

who proposed a dispositional explanation of obedience

Answer 1

adorno

Question 2

what is a dispositional explanation of obedience

Answer 2

individuals’ personality characteristics determine behaviour, not situational influences in the environment

Question 3

what are 4 traits of authoritarian personalitie s

Answer 3

servile towards those of perceived higher status
hostile towards those of lower status
preoccupied with power
dogmatic and inflexible in beliefs/values

Question 4

why did adorno say people adopted authoritarian personalities

Answer 4

due to receiving extremely harsh discipline from parents during upbringing
creates feelings of hostility directed at those weaker than them
cannot take out anger on parents due to fear
extend this submissive behaviour to all authority figures

Question 5

what did adorno develop

Answer 5

questionnaire to measure authoritarian personalities
F - scale
rate how much they agree with statements
tested more than 2000 middle-class white americans and their attitudes towards other racial groups - found that there was a relationship between authoritarian personality and scoring high on the F scale

Question 6

2 strengths of authoritarian personality

Answer 6

• miller found that people who scored high on F scale were more likely to obey an order to hold onto electric wiring while working on an arithmetic problem, compared to those who scored low
• altemeyer ordered participants to give themselves increasing levels of electric shocks when they made a mistake on a learning task, correlation between those wiling to shock themselves and high scores on the F scale

Question 7

2 weaknesses of authoritarian personality

Answer 7

• dispositional explanations cannot explain obedience in entire societies as authoritarian personalities are not common, less than 65% of people have authoritarian personalities so cannot be the only explanation for the level of obedience found in milgrams study
• suggested that lack of education causes and authoritarian personality and obedience, less educated people are more likely to have authoritarian personality and milgram found pps with lower levels of education were more obedient