Social Influence - Authoritarian Personality Flashcards
What is the dispositions explanation to obedience?
Highlights the significance of the individual’s personality.
What is the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience?
Susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher statistical and dismissive of inferior.
What is the authoritarian personality as an explanation of obedience?
Susceptible to obeying people in authority. Such individuals are also thought to be submissive to those of higher statistical and dismissive of inferior.
What is Adorno study?
He wanted to understand the anti-semitism of Holocaust.
Adorno et al investigated the causes of the obedient personality, by studying more than 2000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
They developed several scales, including the Fascism (F) scale, which is used to measure the authoritarian personality.
What did Adorno find from his study?
- They found people with authoritarian leanings, identified with strong people and were contemptuous of weak.
- Very conscious of their own and others’ status.
- There was a strong positive correlation between an authoritarian personality.
What did Adorno conclude were the characteristics of the Authoritarian personality?
Tendency to be especially obedient.
Extreme respect and submissiveness to authority.
Need strong and powerful leaders.
Give one limitation (methodology) of the authoritarian personality
Authoritarian personality to explain obedience is flawed methodology - Greenstein (1969) described the F-scale as having errors questions are worded in the same direction, so it is possible to get a high score just for ticking the same line of boxes down one side - may not be measuring what is intended to measure.
Give a strength in terms of emiracle evidence.
there is empirical research to support the relationship between obedience and the authoritarian personality -Milgram and Elms studied 20 obedient participants and 20 disobedient participants. completed personality questionnaires, including Adorno’s F scale, found a correlation between obedience and the authoritarian personality, obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood - suggesting a relationship between f scale and full obedient individuals.
Give a strength in terms of emiracle evidence.
there is empirical research to support the relationship between obedience and the authoritarian personality -Milgram and Elms studied 20 obedient participants and 20 disobedient participants. completed personality questionnaires, including Adorno’s F scale, found a correlation between obedience and the authoritarian personality, obedient participants were less close to their fathers during childhood - suggesting a relationship between f scale and full obedient individuals.
