Obedience: dispositional explanations

Question 2

what is a strength of the authoritarian personality

Answer 2

research support

Question 3

what research supports the authoritarian personality

Answer 3

Elms & Milgram

Question 4

what did Elms & Milgram find

Answer 4

found that 20 fully obedient participants scored high on the F-scale compared to a control group of 20 disobedient participants

Question 5

what do Elms & Milgram findings suggest

Answer 5

suggest obedient people may share many of the characteristics of people with an authoritarian personality

Question 6

counterargument for Elms & Milgram

Answer 6

when they asked obedient participants about their upbringing, most had good and healthy relationships with their parents during childhood and not harsh and strict like people with an authoritarian personality
- suggests they did not obey because they have an authoritarian personality after all

Question 7

what are some limitations of the authoritarian personality

Answer 7

• other factors may be responsible for obedience
• F-scale is politically biased
• authoritarianism can’t explain a whole country’s behaviour

Question 8

what other factors may be responsible for obedience

Answer 8

lack of education

Question 9

what research found that other factors may be responsible for obedience

Answer 9

• Middendorp & Meloen
• Milgram

Question 10

what did Middendorp & Meloen and Milgram find

Answer 10

• Middendorp & Meloen found that less educated people are consistently more authoritarian than the well educated
• Milgram found that participants with lower levels of education were more obedient than those with higher levels of education

Question 11

what did Middendorp & Meloen and Milgram’s findings suggest

Answer 11

suggest that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible for both obedience and authoritarianism, making the relationship between authoritarianism and obedience more illusionary than real

Question 12

why is the F-scale political bias

Answer 12

researchers believe it to measure only extreme right-wing ideology however left-wing ideology also insists on complete obedience to authority which is not measured in the F-scale

Question 13

what effect does the political bias of the F-scale have on Adorno authoritarian personality theory

Answer 13

it makes it not a comprehensive dispositional explanation as it does not explain obedience to left-wing authoritarianism

Question 14

why can’t authoritarianism explain a whole country’s behaviour

Answer 14

• millions of people in Germany displayed obedient and anti-semitic behaviour however they cannot all have had the same personality
• it seems unlikely the whole population had an authoritarian personality so a more likely explanation is that Germans identified with the Nazi state
• this suggests that social identity theory may be a better explanation