obedience:dispositonal factors

Question 1

aim of adorno et al study

Answer 1

to investigate the causes of obedient personality

Question 2

procedure

Answer 2

2000 middle class white Americans racism
form of government that is ruled by an authoritarian leader having complete power over the lives of people. These individuals are not allowed to disagree with the government.

Question 3

findings

Answer 3

those who scored high on the F scale identified with strong people and were generally disrespectful of the weak. They were very concious if their own and others status

Question 4

conclusion

Answer 4

Adorno et al found that authoritian people had a cognitive style where there was fuzziness between categories of people, fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups of people. There was a strong postive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 5

authoritarian characteristics

Answer 5

Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authorit. They have an extreme response for authority and submissiveness to it. They also show contempt for people they perceive as having inferior social status and have highly conventional attitudes towards sex race and gender

Question 6

origin of the authoritarian personality

Answer 6

adorno at al also sought to identify the origin of the authoritarian personality type. they concluded that it formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting. Typically the parenting style identfied by Adorno features extremely strict disciple, an expectation of absoulate loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism

Question 7

strength-research is correlational

Answer 7

there is difficulty establishing cause and effect link between the authoritarian personality and obedience. this is because the supporting research is correlational and therefore lacks internal vality. These problems highlight the difficulty of establishing a dispostional basis of any behaviour such as obedience

Question 8

weakness- methodological issues with F scale

Answer 8

ELms and Milgram used Adorno F scale to detmerine levels of authoritarian personality. It is possible that the F scale suffers from response bias or social desirability, where participants provide answers that are socially acceptable

Question 9

weakness-limited explanation of obedience

Answer 9

one weakness is that it offers a limited explanation of obedience. any explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find it hard to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population

Question 10

strength-research support for authoritarian personality

Answer 10

zillmer et al reported that 16 Nazi war criminals scored highly on three of the F scale dimensions. Elms and milgram found that the highly obedient participants in Milgrams study scored significantly higher on thr F scale than the less obedient participants. both of these studies offer some support for the view that personality may lead to higher levels of obedience. However, as Zillmer found that only three of the dimensions on the F-scale were relevant, we may question whether it is the authoritarian personality as a whole that is linked to obedience, or whether it is a few specific traits that happen to be part of that personality type