Obedience - Dispositional explanation

Question 1

The authoritarian personality

Answer 1

Someone who shows extreme respect for authority figures - views society as weak - believes we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce tradition - believe everything is right or wrong

Question 2

Origins of the authoritarian personality

Answer 2

• Adorno believed it forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting
• parenting features strict discipline, an expectation of loyalty, high standards and severe criticism of failing
• Parents give conditional love - (i’ll love you if…)
• These experiences create resentment in a child but cannot express their feelings to their parents so they displace them onto others who seem weaker
• explains hatred towards socially inferior people

Question 3

Adorno’s research

Answer 3

Procedure:
- studied over 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
- researchers developed the fascism scale (F-scale) - used to measure authoritarian personality
Findings:
- people who scored high on the F-scale identified with strong people - they were very conscious of their status and showed extreme respect to those of higher status

Question 4

Authoritarian personality - evaluation - strength

Answer 4

• Research support
• Researchers interviewed a small sample of people who had taken part in original obedience studies and had been fully obedient - they all completed the F-scale - the p’s scored significantly higher on the F-scale than in comparison to a group of disobedient p’s
• supports Adornos view that obedient people may show similar characteristics as someone who has an authoritarian personality

Question 5

Authoritarian personality - evaluation - limitation

Answer 5

• Limited explanation
• can’t explain obedient behaviour in majority of country’s population
• e.g in pre-war Germany - millions of people displayed obedient, racist and anti-semitic behaviour
• seems very unlikely that they all had an authoritarian personality
• alternative explanation - majority of German people identified with the anti-semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the outgroup of Jews
• so Adorno’s theory is limited as the alternative explanation is more realistic