obedience: dispositional explanations ao3

Question 1

Research support - elms and milgram 1966

Answer 1

P: research support for the authoritarian personality comes from elms and Milligram 1966
E: took a sample of 40 ppts from milgrams research. 20 of which disobeyed whilst the other 20 obeyed up to a maximum of 450v. Ppts underwent the f scale test and questionnaires on personality eg asking about the relationship with their parents
E: the 20 ppts who obeyed up to 450v scored highly on the f scale test. More of those 20 ppts admired expirimenter and were generally less close to their father
L; all of this points to an authoritarian personality being linked obedience to authority.

Question 2

Counterpoint to elms and milgrams research

Answer 2

P: its important to remember that both Adorno’s and elms and milgrams studies are correlations studies
E; this is therefore a drawback as it makes it hard to establish a cause and effect relationship between authoritarian personality and obedience
E; particularly when a 3rd variable may be involved. For example, some researchers found obedience and authoritarian personality may be associated with lower levels of education.
L: This is a factor that wasn’t taken into account in studies supporting an authoritarian personality being a cause of obedience

Question 3

Weakness: f scale test - bias

Answer 3

P: whilst the F scale test has contributed to research showing the link between AP and obedience it has a major drawback - acquiescence bias
E: whereby, people tend to agree with questions the f scale was written in a way that agreeing with all the questions would artificially inflate their score on the authoritarianism scale leading to innacutate measurement.
E; therefore if we cannot fully rely on the f scale test being a true reflection of ones inclination to having an authoritarian personality it negates any links between AP and obedience .
L: thus reliance on f scale test reduces the chance of meaningful conclusions about AP and obedience

Question 4

Strength - takes the individuals personality into account unlike situational explanation

Answer 4

P; takes an an individuals personality into consideration
E: In milgrams study into obedience a significant proportion (35%) of people resisted the authority figure - however this cannot be explained by situational factors alone as each ppt had the same expirence
E: however, adornos theory acknowledges that the willingness to obey an authority figure can vary from person to person due to differences in personality and childhood expirences eg harsh parenting styles with a childhood of criticism can increase the likelihood of a willingness to obey authority.
L: Hence a strength of the dispositional explanation is that it gives us insight as to why there was such extreme variation in milgrams ppts.