obedience - dispositional explanation

Question 1

what is an authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

• adorno argued that people with an AP firstly show an extreme respect and submissiveness toward authority
• such people also view society to be weaker than it once was, so believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values
• both traits make people with an AP more likely to obey orders from a source of authority
• people with an AP also show contempt for those of inferior social status, fulled by inflexible outlook on world, everything is either right or wrong and they aren’t comfortable with uncertainty
• likely to obey orders even if such orders are destructive (eg. with the nazis)

Question 2

origins of the authoritarian personality

Answer 2

• adorno believed the AP type forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting and strict discipline (nurture)
• believed that these childhood experiences create resentment and hostility, but child cannot express this towards parents due to a fear of discipline, so fears are placed onto others who seem weaker (scapegoating)
• this is a psychodynamic explanation for the hatred towards people who are perceived to be socially inferior, and a central feature of obedience to a higher authority
• may lead to needing to repress a fear of parents, leading to excessive respect for authority figures
• may lead to needing to repress a hatred of parents, leading to hate and anger being placed upon others

Question 3

adorno et al’s research - procedure and findings

Answer 3

procedure - studied more than 2000 middle class, white americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. developed several measurement scales including the potential-for-fascism (f scale). two items from this scale are - ‘obedience and respect for authority are the two most important virtues for children to learn’ and ‘there is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’

findings - people with authoritarian leanings (who scored higher on the scales’ identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’. very conscious of status, showed extreme respect, deference and servility to those of higher status (all traits are basis of obedience). he also found that authoritarian people had a cognitive style, and had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups. strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 4

AP evaluation - research support

Answer 4

• milgram and elms interviewed a small sample of people who had been fully obedient in the original obedient studies, they all completed the f-scale as part of the interview
• all obedient participants scored higher on the scale than a comparison group of disobedient participants, clearly quite different in terms of authoritarianism
• supports adorno’s view that obedient people may show similar characteristics to people with an AP

Question 5

AP evaluation - limited explanation

Answer 5

• authoritarianism cannot explain obedience in the majority of a country’s population
• theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic

Question 6

AP evaluation - individual differences

Answer 6

• limitation is that indivudal differences could explain why some participants are more or less obedient, some people will feel more social pressure
• reduced generalisation

Question 7

evaluation of f-scale

Answer 7

• biased questions and options aren’t randomised
• people may get bored and start ticking all the same one, most likely to be the highest one so will come out with a high, inaccurate score

acquiescence bias - tendency to agree with items on a questionnaire regardless of the content of the question

Question 8

AP evaluation - correlation and causation

Answer 8

• correlational research so can’t establish cause and effect link between authoritarianism and obedience
• can only say that variables are linked, we can only make assumptions due to presence of other explanations for findings

Question 9

AP evaluation - research support from elms and milgram

Answer 9

• during a follow up study, those who were fully obedient scored higher on tests of authoritarianism
• shows that they respected and believed an authority figure (experimenter)

Question 10

AP evaluation - research limitations from zillmer

Answer 10

• 16 nazi criminals, scored highly on only 3 f-scale dimensions
• doesn’t support scale as if they did have APs then they would’ve scored higher on the majority of dimensions