Lesson 8: Dispositional Explanations Of Obedience

Question 1

Dispositional explanations of obedience

Answer 1

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

Question 2

Authoritarian personality

Answer 2

• Adorno argued that authoritarian personalities are more likely to obey authority figures. Authoritarian personalities have a collection of traits which make them more obedient. These include:
• 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

Why do people develop authoritarian personalities?

Answer 3

• Adorno (1950) thought that people developed these personalities due to receiving extremely strict/rigid parenting, usually involving physical punishment. This creates feelings of hostility which are displaced onto weaker others who cannot fight back and are therefore safe. They cannot take out their anger on their parents because they fear them, so instead they repress their anger and act in a submissive way towards them. They then extend this submissive behaviour to all authority figures.

Question 4

F scale

Answer 4

• Adorno (1950) developed a questionnaire to measure authoritarian personalities called the F scale. Participants are asked to rate how much they agree with statements such as ‘obedience and respect for authority are important virtues children should learn’ and ‘rules are there to follow, not to be changed’.

Question 5

Strength of authoritarian personality (Miller)

Answer 5

+ Miller (1975) found that people who scored high on the F scale were more likely to obey order to hold onto some electric wiring while working on an arithmetic problem, compared to people who scored low on the F scale.

Question 6

Strength of authoritarian personality (Altmeyer)

Answer 6

+ Altmeyer 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.