obedience: dispositional explanation (adorno) Flashcards
AO1: authoritarian personality
type of personality susceptible to obeying people of authority. Thought to be submissive to those of a higher status and dismissive of inferiors.
believed it forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting
AO1: adorno’s research
studied 2000 middle class white Americans and their unconscious attitude towards other racial groups using potential for facism scale (f-scale)
found: people who scored high, identified with strong people, were conscious of status, showed respect to higher status, had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
AO3: strength- research support (milgram)
P: research support from milgram
E: interviewed small sample of people who participated in OG study and were fully obedient. All completed the f-scale
E: scored significantly higher than 20 disobedient participants
HOWEVER, when individual subscales of the F-scale were analysed. Found that obedient participants and numbers of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians e.g. didn’t experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood
AO3: limitation- can’t explain obedient behaviour in the majority of the countries behaviour
P: can’t explain obedient behaviour in the majority of the countries behaviour
E: in pre war germany, millions of people displayed obedient, racist, anti semitic behaviours
E: despite fact they might have different personalities. Seems unlikely they all posess an authoritarian personality
AO3: limitation- response bias
P: flawed evidence
E: f-scale is seriously flawed scale
E: it is possible to get a high score just by selecting ‘agree’
L: response bias
AO3: limitation- political bias
P: political bias
E: only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right wing ideology
E: politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality
L: doesn’t account for obedience of authority across the whole political spectrum
