SOC 16 - Dispositional explanation for obedience

Question 1

What is an authoritarian personality (AP)?

Answer 1

• A type of personality that Adorno argued was especially susceptible to obeying people in authority
• Such individuals are thought to be submissive to those of higher status and dismissive to inferiors

Question 2

What is social identity?

Answer 2

• Is an individual’s self-concept which comes from ‘belonging’ to a social group
• Social identity theory describes the cognitive processes related to social identity and how social identity impacts intergroup behaviour

Question 3

What is a psychodynamic explanation?

Answer 3

• Unconscious processes and unresolved past conflicts as influences on behaviour. In general, suggest that our behaviour is due to repressed childhood experiences that have shaped our personality
• Adult behaviour is also influenced by defence mechanisms

Question 4

Where is an authoritarian personality thought to have originated from?

Answer 4

Adorno et al. believed the AP type forms in childhood, mostly as a result of harsh parenting

Question 5

Who conducted research into authoritarian personality by creating the F-scale?

Answer 5

Adorno et al

Question 6

What was the procedure of Adorno et al’s study?

Answer 6

• Adorno et al. (1950) studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other ethnic groups
• The researchers developed several measurement scales, including the potential-for-fascism scale (F-scale)
• This scale is still used to measure Authoritarian Personality
• Two examples of items from the F-scale are: ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn’, and ‘There is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love, gratitude and respect for his parents’

Question 7

What were the findings of Adorno et al’s study?

Answer 7

• People with authoritarian leanings (i.e. those who scored high on the F-scale and other measures) identified with ‘strong’ people and were generally contemptuous of the ‘weak’
• They were very conscious of status (their own and others’) and showed extreme respect, deference and servility to those of higher status - these traits are the basis of obedience
• Adorno et al. also found that authoritarian people had a certain cognitive style (way of perceiving others) in which there was no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people (i.e. ‘black and white’ thinking)
• They had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
• Adorno et al. found a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 8

What are the strengths of the theory of AP?

Answer 8

• There is evidence from Milgram supporting the AP

Question 9

How does evidence from Milgram support the theory of AP?

Answer 9

• Milgram, together with Alan Elms (Elms and Milgram 1966), interviewed a small sample of people who had participated in the original obedience studies and been fully obedient
• They all completed the F-scale (and other measures) as part of the interview
• These 20 obedient participants scored significantly higher on the overall F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants
• The two groups were clearly quite different in terms of authoritarianism
• This finding supports Adorno et al’s view that obedient people may well show similar characteristics to people who have an Authoritarian Personality

Question 10

What are the limitations of the theory of AP?

Answer 10

• Obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians
• Cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of country’s population
• F- scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology
• For instance, it is possible to get a high score just by selecting ‘agree’ answers. This means that anyone with this response bias is assessed as having an Authoritarian Personality

Question 11

Further explain the limitatio ‘Obedient participants had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians’.

Answer 11

• For example, unlike authoritarians, Milgram’s obedient participants generally did not glorify their fathers, did not experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood and did not have particularly hostile attitudes towards their mothers
• This means that the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex
• The obedient participants were unlike authoritarians in so many ways that authoritarianism is unlikely to be a useful predictor of obedience

Question 12

Further explain the limitation ‘Cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of country’s population’.

Answer 12

• For example, in pre-war Germany, millions of individuals displayed obedient and anti-Semitic behaviour
• This was despite the fact that they must have differed in their personalities in all sorts of ways. It seems extremely unlikely that they could all possess an Authoritarian Personality
• An alternative view is that the majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semitic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews, a social identity theory approach
• Therefore, Adorno’s theory is limited because an alternative explanation is much more realistic

Question 13

Further explain the limitation ‘F-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology’.

Answer 13

• Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda (1954) argued that the F-scale is a politically biased interpretation of Authoritarian Personality
• They point out the reality of left-wing authoritarianism in the shape of Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism
• In fact, extreme right-wing and left-wing ideologies have a lot in common
• For example, they both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to political authority
• This means Adorno’s theory is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that accounts for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum