Obedience: Dispositional explanations

Question 1

What is the dispositional explanation

Answer 1

Authoritarian personality

Question 2

Who conducted research into authoritarian personality

Answer 2

Ardono

Question 3

What did ardono initially believe

Answer 3

That a high level of obedience was a psychological disorder and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual

Question 4

Who did ardono study

Answer 4

More than 2 000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups

Question 5

What did the f-scale measure

Answer 5

Tendency towards fascism, one characteristic of authoritarianism

Question 6

What type of people scored highly on the f-scale

Answer 6

Identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak. Conscious of their own and others status, showing excessive respect to those of a higher status

Question 7

How many authoritarian characteristics were identified by Adorno

Answer 7

6

Question 8

6 authoritarian characteristic identified by Adorno

Answer 8

• extreme respect for authority
• contempt for people theur believe to have inferior
• highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender
• enforce traditional values eg country, religion and family
• inflexible in their outlook, everything is right or wrong

Question 9

5 characteristics of parenting leading to authoritarian personality

Answer 9

• strict discipline
• exception of absolute royalty
• impossibly high standards
• severe criticism and perceived failings
• conditional love

Question 10

4 evaluation points of authoritarian personality

Answer 10

Strength - supportive evidence
Weakness - can’t establish cause and effect
Weakness - limited explanation
Weakness - issues with methodology of f-scale

Question 11

Elaboration of strength - supportive evidence

Answer 11

• Elms conducted interviews with a small sample of ps who had been obedient in milgrams study
• they found higher levels of authoritarianism compared to those who didn’t obey
• they saw Milgram as more obedient than the leader, which did not happen with those who didn’t obey
• suggesting those who obeyed in milgrams study were higher than authoritarianism traits

Question 12

Elaboration weakness - can’t establish cause and effect

Answer 12

• can’t establish cause and effect with obedience and authoritarianism wirh ardonos research
• the f scale questionnaire found siffnificant correlation between variables
• eg authoritarianism is strongly correlated with prejudice against minority groups
• however, ardono couldn’t claim that authoritarianism is the cause of obedience as you cannot establish cause and effect with correlation
• this underestimates the validity of the explanation as there could be other factors mediating between obedience and personality

Question 13

Elaboration of weakness - limited explanation

Answer 13

• limited explanation as can’t explain obedience in majority of countries population
• in pre war Germany millions of people demonstrated racist and anti-semantic views despite the fact there were a multiple different personalities
• extremely unlikely they would all possess the same personality
• better explain by social identity and an alternative explanation is more realistic
• the majority of German people would identify wirh rhe anti-Semitic nazi state

Question 14

Elaboration of weakness - issues regarding methodology

Answer 14

• green stein describes the f scale as comedy of methodology errors
• eg scale criticised as they were all written in the same direction meaning you could get a higher score from just ticking the same line of boxes
• meaning people who agree with the items on the scale are not necessarily authoritarianism
• it’s measuring people’s tendancy to agree with things
• this lowers internal validity