obedience: dispositionsl explanation Flashcards
Authoritarian personality
A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors
Theodore Adorno and his colleagues wanted to understand what?
the anti-semitism of the holocaust
From their research, was their conclusion similar or different to Milgram’s?
They drew very different conclusions than Milgram had
On the basis of their research, what did they come to believe?
That a high level of obedience was basically a psychological disorder, and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual
What was the procedure of Adorno et al’s 1950 study?
They investigated the causes of the obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
> They developed several scales to investigate this, including the potential for fascism scale (F-scale) which is still used to measure authoritarian personality
Where did Adorno et al conclude that authoritarian personality is formed?
They concluded that it formed in childhood, as a result of harsh parenting
What is the parenting style of the parents of a person with an authoritarian personality?
extremely strict discipline
> an expectation of absolute loyalty
> impossibly high standards
> severe criticism of perceived failings
> also characterised as ‘conditional love’ - that is, the parents’ love and affection for their child depends purely on how he or she behaves
What does this harsh parenting style create in the child towards the parents and others?
Creates resentment and hostility in the child, but the child cannot express these feeling directly against their parents because of a well-founded fear of reprisals.
> So the feelings are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker, in a process known as scapegoating.
> This explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority, which is a dislike for people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups. This is a PSYCHODYNAMIC EXPLANATION
