Obedience: Dispositional Explanations Flashcards
What does dispositional mean?
Individual characteristics that influence actions and behaviour in a person.
What is the authoritarian personality?
A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people of authority.
What was the procedure of Adorno et al’s research into the obedient personality?
Investigated 2000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. Developed scales to measure this, including the F-scale.
What were the findings of Adorno et al’s research into the authoritarian personality?
Found those with authoritarian leanings (high on F-scale etc.) identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’. They were conscious of their own and others status, showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of a higher status. Cognitive tyle- no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people with fixed stereotypes of other groups. Strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
What are some authoritarian characteristics?
Tendency to be especially obedient to authority, extreme respect and submissiveness to authority, Show contempt to people they perceive as having lower social status, and have highly conventional attitudes to sex, race and gender. Believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values. Everything is either right or wrong and they are uncomfortable with uncertainty.
Where is the origin of the authoritarian personality and why?
Childhood and strict, harsh parenting. Features of extremely strict discipline, expectations of loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticisms of perceived failings- characterised by conditional love.
What does Adorno argues these experiences (the ones causing authoritarian personality) create?
Resentment/ hostility but they can not express this to parents due to reprisals. Fear is displaced onto those perceived as weaker, this is known as scapegoating. Explains obedience to higher authority but dislike to those considered inferior. This is a psychodynamic explanation.
Evaluation of dispositional factors: Research support.
Milgram conducted interviews with fully obedient behaviour, who also scored highly on the F-scale believing there may be a link between that and the authoritarian personality. However this link is merely a correlation and cannot conclude that authoritarian personality causes obedience. May be a third factor?
Evaluation of dispositional factors: Limited explanation.
Any explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find it difficult to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population. E.g. Germany- many people obedient, racist and anti-Semitic but everyone has different personalities- extremely unlikely everyone has an authoritarian personality. This is a limitation as an alternative explanation, social identity, is a much more realistic explanation for obedience.
Evaluation of dispositional factors: Political bias.
Christie and Jahoda argue the F-scale is a politically bias way of measuring authoritarian personality. They point out extreme right wing and extreme left wing ideologies have much in common- especially emphasising absolute obedience to legitimate political authority. Limitation- cannot account for obedience right across the political spectrum.
