obedience: dispositional explanation Flashcards
dispositional explanation
- highlights importance of an individuals personality
- some don’t believe that obedience can be fully explained by factor within a situation (location, proximity)
- must be something to do with the personality
authoritarian
- type of personality susceptible to obeying people in authority
- some people are more submissive to those of higher status
Adorno et al (1950): procedure
- looked at the cause of obedient personality
- more than 2000 middle-class men were measured unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
- used the F-scale
measures tendency towards fascism (thought to be the essence of authoritarian personality)
Adorno et al (1950): findings
- those who scored highly on the F-scale identified with ‘strong people’ and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’
- very conscious of their own & others’ status : show excessive respect & servitity towards higher status
- had a cognitive style that had fixed & distinctive stereotypes
positive correlation between authoritarianism & prejudice
Authoritarian characteristics
- tendency to be extremely obedient to authority
- extreme respect for authority
- show contempt for those they perceive as having inferior social status
- highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race & gender
where an authoritarian personality comes from?
- as a result of harsh parenting as they would have grown up with:
- strict discipline
- expectation of absolute loyalty
- impossibly high standards
- severe criticisms of perceived feelings
- conditional love
- cause resentment and hostility as the child can’t express their emotions due to fear of consequences
scapegoating
fears from strict childhood placed onto others that are perceived to be weaker
AO3: research support
- Milgram and his assistant interviewed a small sample that scored highly on the F-scale and were fully obedient
- led them to believe there’s a link between obedience & authoritarian personality
- only correlation
- can’t say authoritarian personality causes obedience as there are other factors involved
Hyman & Sheatsley:
suggests a third factor could be the level of education
maybe obedience & authoritarian personality are associated with lower level of education
not directly linked to each other
AO3: limited explanation
seems unlikely in pre-War Germany millions of individuals who displayed obedient & racist behaviour had an authoritarian personality
more realistic explanation is social identity theory
obeyed Nazi state as they identified with them
AO3: political bias
- F-scale measures an extreme form of right-wing ideology
- politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality
both right & left-wing ideologies emphasise importance of obedience to political authority
Christie & Jahoda: say that it’s a politically biased intrepetation
- point out left-wing authoritarianism exists
- both and left & right wing extreme ideologies have much in common
- both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authority
- not a comprehensive explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole spectrum
AO3: methodological problems
- some say that the F-scale doesn’t measure authoritarian personality but measures tendency to agree with everything
- are aquiescers and also known as acquiescence bias
interviewed ppts about childhood experiences but researchers knew ppts test scores (knew which had authoritarian personality)
AO3: correlation not causation
- Adorno found significant correlations
- e.g : authoritarianism is strongly correlated with prejudice against a minority
- however strong a correlation we don’t know the causation
- Adorno can’t claim that harsh parenting causes the development of an authoritarian personality
