Obedience: Dispostional Explanations

Question 1

What is a dispositional factor?

Answer 1

Factors within individual

Question 2

Procedure

Answer 2

Adorno(1950):
Studied 2000 M/C white American and unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed several scales to test this, including F-scale (fascism) which is used to measure authoritarian personality.

Question 3

Findings

Answer 3

People with authoritarian personalities identify with ‘strong’ and have fixed cognitive style. Also very conscious of peoples status showing excessive respect and servility to higher status.

Question 4

Authoritarian characteristics

Answer 4

Type of personality that was very susceptible to obeying people in authority. Submissive to higher power and dismissive of inferiors.

Question 5

Origin of authoritarian personality

Answer 5

Harsh parenting creates hostility that cannot be expressed against parents so is displaced- psychodynamic approach

Question 6

Evaluation

Answer 6

Research support-some Milgram’s had it
Limited- can’t explain increase across whole culture
Political bias-more right wing ideology