Lesson 8: Dispositional explanations of OBEDIENCE Flashcards
Who proposed the dispositional explanation of obedience?
Adorno (1950)
What is meant by a “Dispositional explanation”
Explanation that suggests that an individuals’ PERSONALITY CHARACTERISTICS determine their behaviour
Fill in the blank:
According to Adorno people with ___________ personalities were more likely to obey authority figures
Authoritarian personalities
What traits do people with authoritarian personalities have that make them more obedient
(Hint: Servile, Hostile, Preoccupied, Inflexible)
- Servile towards people of HIGHER status
- Hostile towards people of LOWER status
- Preoccupied with power
- Inflexible in their beliefs and values
According to Adorno, why do authoritarian personalities develop?
They develop due to receiving extremely STRICT and RIGID PARENTING
-this creates feelings of HOSTILITY which is displaced onto WEAKER others who cannot fight back.
-cannot take ANGER out on parents because they FEAR THEM + anger is REPRESSED and act SUBMISSIVE towards them
SUBMISSIVE BEHAVIOUR IS EXTENDED TO ALL AUTHORITY FIGURES
What did Adorno develop to measure authoritarian personalities?
A questionaire called the F scale (fascism)
What were participants asked in this questionaire?
to rate how much they agree with statements such as:
‘obedience and respect for an authority figure are IMPORTANT virtues children should follow’
‘rules are there to follow and not change’
State a POSITIVE evaluation of authoritarian personality
(HINT: electric wiring+ arithmetic)
+Miller (1975) found that people who scored high on the F scale= MORE LIKELY to obey an order to hold on to ELECTRIC wiring while solving an arithmetic question
IN COMPARISON
to those= low f scale
State a POSITIVE evaluation of authoritarian personality
(HINT: mistake + electric shocks)
+ ALTEMEYER (1981) ordered participants to give themselves INCREASING LEVELS of ELECTRIC SHOCKS when they made a mistake on a learning task.
There was a significant correlation between those willing to shock themselves and HIGH SCORES on the F scale
State a NEGATIVE evaluation of authoritatian personality
(HINT: situational variables)
Situational variables> dispositional variables
-Milgram conducted many VARIATIONS of the original experiment with vastly different results
Obedience= 100% when Mr wallace than made no noise
Obedience= 0% when two authority figures disagreed with eachother (one wanted the teacher to stop, the other wanted the teacher to continue)
State a NEGATIVE EVALUATION of authoritarian personality
(Hint: obedience in entire societies)
Dispositional factors cannot explain OBEDIENCE in entire societies, because AUTHORITARIAN personalities are not COMMON.
-Less than 65% people have AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITIES, so it cannot be the only explanation for the level of obedience found in the original Milgram study.
