Obedience: Dispositional factors

Question 1

What are characteristics of someone with an Authoritarian personality type?

Answer 1

• extreme respect for and submissiveness to authority
• view society as weaker than previous generations
• show contempt for people of lower social status
• inflexible world view;

Question 2

Where does an Authoritarian personality come from?

Answer 2

• Harsh parenting
• Conditional love- feelings of resentment and hostility
• feelings cant be expressed to parents so are displaced onto others who are preceived as weaker;

Question 3

Explain Adorno et al’s procedure

Answer 3

• Studied 2000+, middle class, white, Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
• developed a measurement scale; F-scale (potential for fascism scale)
• the F-scale measures authoritarian personality;

Question 4

What were Adorno et al’s findings?

Answer 4

• Authoritarian people (those scoring high on F-scale) were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’, lower class but showed extreme respect for to those of higher status
• authoritarian people hold fixed, distinct stereotypes about other groups
• positive correlation of authoritarian personality and prejudice against other racial groups;

Question 5

Supporting evidence for Authoritarian personality theory (+)

Answer 5

Milgram’s study provides suporting evidence
- Milgram interviewed a small sasmple of ps from original obedience study and had been fully obedient
- They all completed the F-scale questions
- Ps scored significantly higher than comparison group of 20 disobedient ps
therefore this theory is reliable because findings are consistent in other studies;

Question 6

Criticisms of the supporting evidence (-)

Answer 6

When researches analysed the results from the participants F-scales, they found that they had a number of characteristics not typical of Authoritarian personalities: e.g harsh childhood
therfore this link between obedience and authoritarianism may not be as reliable and the F-scale may not be a useful predictor of obedience;

Question 7

Opposing theories to Authoritarian personality (-)

Answer 7

• After Milgram conducted his first study on obedience, he carriedf out a large number of variations in or to consider the situational variables that may lead to varying obedience levels
  this opposing theory has lots of evidence to support it which could question the validity of this study;

Question 8

Application of this theory to the real world (+)

Answer 8

Findings from this study can be applied to the real world
-using this theory we can identify individuals that are more susceptible to blind obedienc e
- to benefit society, we can identify and prevent those at risk, from being in positions of authority, ensuring leaders are legitimate and will make society a safer place;

Question 9

Is this theory reductionsistic? (-)

Answer 9

This theory is reductionistic
- This is an oversimplication of factors that contribute to obedience
- Factors such as authoritarian personality are a correlation not a causation- this theory assumes that one factor automatically leads to another
therefore this theory lacks validity because it is an oversimplication due to the limited factors taken into account;