SI- Dispositional Explanations of Obedience Flashcards
Who proposed a dispositional explanation of obedience?
Adorno (1950)
- he conducted a study with 2000 middle class americans using an f scale
What do dispositional explanations of behaviour claim?
individuals’ personality characteristics determine their behaviour, not situational influences in the environment.
What did Adorno argue?
Adorno argued that authoritarian personalitiesare more likely to obey authority figures.
What are the traits of authoritarian personalities?
- Servile towards people of perceived higher status.
- Hostile towards people of lower status(scapegoating)
- Preoccupied with power
- Inflexible in their beliefs and values
- Conformist and conventional (e.g. rule following)
- Likely to categorise people as ‘us’or ‘them’
- Dogmatic (intolerant of ambiguity).
Why would people develop these authoritarian personalities according to Adorno/
strict/rigid parenting creates feelings of hostility which are displaced onto weaker
- They cannot take out their anger on their parents because they fear them, so instead they repress their anger and act in a submissive way towards them.
- They then extend this submissive behaviour to all authority figures.
What questionnaire did Adorno develop?
- Adorno (1950) developed a questionnaire to measure authoritarian personalities called the F (Fascism) scale.
- Participants are asked to rate how much they agree with statements such as ‘obedience and respect for authority are important virtues children should learn’and ‘rules are there to follow, not to be changed’.
Evaluate the authoritarian personality. (ADVANTAGES)
1) MILLER (1975) found that people who scored high on the F scale were more likely to obey an order to hold onto some electric wiring while working on an arithmetic problem, compared to people who scored low on the F scale.
2) ALTEMEYER (1981) ordered participants to give themselves increasing levels of electric shocks when they made a mistake on a learning task. There was a significant correlation between those willing to shock themselves and high scores on the F scale
2) MILGRAM AND ELMS (1966) conducted post experimental interviews with participants who were fully obedient in milgrams study and found obedient people scored higher on f scale than disobedient. They showed more characteristics of authoritarian personality. Although the results of Elms and Milgram suggest a link between authoritarian personality and obedience, these results are correctional and it is therefore difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of the obedience. In addition, there are many other situational factors that contribute to obedience, including proximity, uniform and location
Evaluate the authoritarian personality. (DISADVANTAGES)
1) METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
- A limitation of the authoritarian personality explanation is that it is based on flawed methodology.
- For example, Adorno introduced the F- scale questionnaire to measure the obedient personality.
- There are many problems with the questionnaire itself. For example, each item on the questionnaire is worded in the same direction meaning it is fairly easy to get a high score on the authoritarian personality.
- Moreover, the questions are all closed meaning there is no room for explanation.
- questionnaires suffer from social desirability bias
- this reduces internal validity of the questionnaire research method
2) INDIVIDUAL DIFF : that contribute to developing an authoritarian personality. Research by MIDDENDORP AND MELEON 1990 has found that less educated people are more likely to display characteristics of authoritarian personality than well educated people. suggests there are other factor such as levels of eduction that can affect obedience not just authoritarian personality.
3) Although the results of Elms and Milgram suggest a link between authoritarian personality and obedience, these results are correctional and it is therefore difficult to draw meaningful conclusions about the exact cause of the obedience. In addition, there are many other situational factors that contribute to obedience, including proximity, uniform and location.
4) Adorno used a biased sample – Only used 2000 middle class white Americans who are more likely to have an Authoritarian personality due to demographics and the time of the study (post ww2) – Research lacks population validity and historical validity, so conclusions cannot be generalised to people outside the sample.
Issues and debates evaluation :
1) DETERMINISTIC; A weakness of the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience is that it can be considered as deterministic
This is because it assumes that all obedient behaviour of an individual is down to STRICT UPBRINGING and does not take into account other mediating factors that may affect obedience such as FREE WILL. People who are brought up with a strict upbringing do not always grow up to be obedient and instead rebel against authority figures
This is a weakness as the theory is too narrow and does not consider that there are other mediating factors, which contributes to the obedience of an individual
Thus, decreasing the validity of the explanation
2) REDUCTIONIST : A weakness of the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience is that it can be considered as reductionist
This is because the explanation oversimplifies the complex behaviour of obedience down to one factor, which is personality. In fact there may be other factors, which contributes to an individual being obedient to authority figures, such as the legitimacy of the authority figure, the location, proximity and so on
This is a weakness as it means that our understanding of having an authoritarian personality and how it causes an individual to become obedient is incomplete
Therefore, reducing the validity of the dispositional explanation of obedience
