Lesson 8- dispositional explanations of obedience

Question 1

Dispositional explanations

Answer 1

-Adorno (1950) proposed a dispositional explanation of obedience, claim that individuals personality characteristics determine their behaviour, not situational influences in the environment

Question 2

Authoritarian personality

Answer 2

-more likely to obey authority figures
-servile towards people of perceived higher status
-hostile towards people of lower status
-preoccupied with power
-inflexible in their beliefs and values
-conformist and conventional
-likely to categorise people as ‘us’ or ‘them’
-dogmatic, intolerant of ambiguity

Question 3

Adorno (1950)

Answer 3

-thought people developed these personalities due to receiving extremely strict/rigid parenting usually involving physical punishment
-creates feelings of hostility which are displaced onto weaker others who cannot fight back, therefore safe
-cannot take out anger on parents because they fear them, so instead repress their anger and act in submissive way towards them, extend this submissive behaviour to all authority figures
-developed a questionnaire to measure authoritarian personalities called the F (fascism) scale, participants asked to rate how much they agree with statements regarding obedience, authority figures, virtues children should learn, rules

Question 4

Evaluation (2 strengths 3 weaknesses)

Answer 4

-Miller (1975) found people who scored high on F scale were more likely to obey an order to hold onto some electric wiring while working on an arithmetic problem, compared to people who scored low on the F scale
-Altmeyer (1981) ordered participants to give themselves increasing levels of electric shocks when they made a mistake on a learning task, high significant correlation between those willing to shock themselves and high scores on F scale
-situational variables may be more important, Milgram (1974) variations, obedience was 100% when Mr Wallace made no noise, however obedience was 0% when there were two authority figures who disagreed with each other (one wanted teacher to continue, other to stop)
-cannot explain obedience in entire societies because authoritarian personalities are not common, far fewer than 65% of people have so cannot be only explanation for level of obedience found in original Milgram study
-could be lack of education causes authoritarian personality and obedience, Middendorp and Meleon (1990) have found less educated people are more likely to have authoritarian personality and Milgram (1974) found participants with lower levels of education were more obedient