*Obedience: Dispositional Explanations Flashcards
What is the authoritarian personality?
A type of personality susceptible to obeying those in authority, submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.
Who investigated the causes of the obedient personality?
Adorno et al (1950).
What was the sample size in Adorno et al’s study?
2000 middle class white Americans.
What scale was created to investigate authoritarian personality?
Potential for fascism scale (F-scale).
What correlation was found in people with authoritarian leanings?
Strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
List characteristics of authoritarian personality.
- Tendency to be especially obedient to authority
- Extreme respect and submissiveness to authority
- Contempt for those with an inferior social status
- Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race, and gender
- Belief in strong and powerful leaders
- Inflexible outlook with no grey areas
- Uncomfortable with uncertainty.
What did Adorno conclude about the origins of authoritarian personality?
It is formed in childhood from harsh parenting.
What parenting style contributes to the development of an authoritarian personality?
Strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards, severe criticism of failure.
What is scapegoating in the context of authoritarian personality?
Displaced fear onto others who are ‘weaker’ due to resentment and hostility towards parents.
What suggestion did Milgram’s interviews indicate about obedient participants?
All scored highly on the F scale, suggesting a link between obedience and authoritarian personality.
True or False: An authoritarian personality directly causes obedience.
False.
What could be a potential third factor linking authoritarianism and obedience?
Lower levels of education.
What limitation is noted regarding the explanation of obedience using personality?
It cannot explain obedience in the majority of the population.
What alternative explanation was proposed regarding the obedience in pre-war Germany?
Majority identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state and scapegoated the outgroup of Jews.
What did Christie and Jahoda (1954) argue about the F scale?
It is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality.
What did Greenstein (1969) describe the F scale as?
‘A comedy of methodological errors.’
What is acquiescence bias in the context of the F scale?
The tendency to score high if one just ticks the same column of boxes.
