obedience - dispositional explanation

Question 1

dispositional explanation definition

Answer 1

any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of the individual’s personality. such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations

Question 2

authoritarian personality definition

Answer 2

a type of personality that Adorno argues was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority, such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors

Question 3

who came up with authoritarian personality explanation

Answer 3

Adorno et al

Question 4

why did Adorno and his colleagues research obedience

Answer 4

wanted to understand the Antisemitism of the holocaust

Question 5

what did Adorno and colleagues believe about obedience

Answer 5

high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder. they believed the causes of such as disorder lie in the personality of the individual rather than the situation - dispositional explanation

Question 6

Adorno et al argued people with authoritarian personality showed

Answer 6

-an extreme respect and submissiveness to authority
-view society as ‘weaker’ than it once was so believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country and family
-both these characteristics make people with authoritarian personality more likely to obey orders from a source of authority

Question 7

authoritarian personality view on those of lower status

Answer 7

contempt for those of inferior status

Question 8

authoritarian personality outlook on world

Answer 8

inflexible with no ‘grey areas’, everything is either right or wrong and are very uncomfortable with uncertainty

Question 9

authoritarian personality view on ‘other’ people (such as those form a different ethnic group)

Answer 9

responsible for ills of society. ‘other’ people are a convenient target for authoritarians who are likely to obey orders from authority figures eve when such orders are destructive (such as in Nazi Germany)

Question 10

where does Adorno et al believe the origins of authoritarian personality come from

Answer 10

forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting

Question 11

what parenting can cause child to have authoritarian personality

Answer 11

-extremely strict discipline
-an expectation of absolute loyalty
-impossibly high standards and severe criticism of perceived failings
-parents give conditional love (love and affection for child depends on how child behaves)

Question 12

how did Adorno et al propose harsh parenting effects the child

Answer 12

childhood experiences create resentment and hostility in the child. but the child cannot directly express these feelings directly against the parent as they fear punishment. so there fears are displaced onto others who they perceive to be weaker, in a process called scapegoating. this explains hatred towards people considered socially inferior or who belong to other social groups, a central feature of obedience to a higher authority. this is a psychodynamic explanation

Question 13

when did Adorno et al develop authoritarian personality theory

Answer 13

1950

Question 14

what did Adorno et al base their authoritarian personality theory on

Answer 14

research data

Question 15

Adorno et al sample

Answer 15

more than 200 middle-class, white Americans

Question 16

Adorno et al procedure

Answer 16

studied more than 2000 middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups. the researchers developed several measurement scales, including the potential-for-fascism scale (F-scale). this scale is used to measure authoritarian personality

Question 17

examples of items on the F-scale

Answer 17

-‘obedience and respect for authority are the most important values for children to learn’
-‘there is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel love, gratitude and respect for their parents’

Question 18

findings of Adrono et al’s research

Answer 18

people with authoritarian leanings (those who scored high on F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous for the ‘weak’. they were very conscious of status (theirs and others) and showed extreme respect, deference and servility to those of higher status - traits which are the basis of obedience

Question 19

Adorono et al findings on cognitive ways of people with authoritarian personality

Answer 19

found authoritarian people had a certain cognitive style (way of perceiving others) in which there was no fuzziness between categories of people - black and white thinking. they had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups. Adorno et al found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 20

Strength of Adorno et al dispositional explanation of authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience - research support

Answer 20

-evidence from Milgram supporting the authoritarian personality
-Elms and Milgram 1966, interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and had been fully obedient. they all completed the F-scale (and other measures) as part of an interview. these 20 obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants. the two groups were clearly quite different in terms of authoritarianism –> supports Adornal et al’s view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have an authoritarian personality

Question 21

limitation of Adorno et al dispositional explanation of authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience - counterpoint to research support

Answer 21

-however, when researchers analysed the individual subscales of the F-scale, they found that the obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians. For example, Milgram’s participants did not generally glorify their fathers, did not experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood and did not have particularly hostile attitudes towards their mothers –> means that the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex. the obedient participants were unlike authoritarians in so many ways that authoritarianism is unlikely to be a useful prediction of obedience

Question 22

limitation of Adorno et al dispositional explanation of authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience - limited explanation

Answer 22

-limitation of authoritarianism is cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population
-for example, in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour. this was despite the fact they must have differed in personalities in all sorts of ways. it seems extremely unlikely that they could all posses and authoritarian personality. an alternative view is that the majority of German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews, a social identity theory approach –> Adorno’s theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic

Question 23

limitation of Adorno et al dispositional explanation of authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience - political bias

Answer 23

-F-scale only measures the tendency towards extreme form of right-wing ideology
-Christie and Jahoda 1954, argued that the F-scale is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality. they point out the reality of the left-wing authoritarianism in shape of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism. in fact extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have a lot in common, for example, both emphaising the importance of political authority –> Adorno’s theory is not a comprehensions dispositional explanation that accounts for dispositional explanation that accounts for obedience to authority across a whole political spectrum

Question 24

evaluation of Adorno et al dispositional explanation of authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience - flawed evidence

Answer 24

-on the positive side, research with the F-scale has provided the basis of an explanation of obedience based on authoritarian personality
-on the other side, Greenstein 1969 calls the F-scale ‘a comedy of methodological errors’ because it is a seriously flawed scale. for instance, it is possible to get a high score just be selecting agree answers, this means than anyone with response bias is assessed as having an authoritarian personality