Social influence- Authoritive personality Flashcards
(24 cards)
Who proposed that people with authoritative personalities are more likely to obey?
-Adorno (1950)
What are some traits of authoritative personalities?
-Preoccupied with power
-Submissive of authoritative figures
-Hostile toward people of lower status
-Inflexible in their beliefs and values
-Rule following
-Categories people with ‘Us’ them”
-Intolerant of ambiguity
-Associated with right-wing ideas/conservatives
Why did Adorno believe people developed these personalities?
-Due to receiving harsh punishments/discipline, they have high expectations of them and love based on conditions as a child from their parents
-Result of having overbearing, dictatorial parents
-These parents do not allow or encourage free will, expression or freedom of choice in their children
What did this treatment as a child create? Why?
-Unconscious feelings of hostility which are displaced onto others who are weaker and cannot fight back
-As they cannot take their anger out on their parents
How do they act consciously?
-Often idealise their parents and act in a submissive way, as they are authority figures
-Although they feel anger and resentment towards them
-Therefore, they take their anger and anxiety out on those below us in the social hierarchy (eg. those with a lower status)
What is meant by a dispositional explanation?
based on the characteristics of an individual (eg. their personality traits)
Which side of the nature nurture debate is Adornos theory?
Nurture
What did Adorno devise to measure the authoritarian personality
The F scale
What does the F stand for?
Facism
Did the F scale have fixed responses on the scale ranged from ‘Disagree strongly’ to ‘Agree strongly’?
Yes
What was the initial sample that completed the questionare?
-2000 middle class white americans
What was the issue of this sample?
-Not representative of the racial and ethnic groups in the USA at the time
What was the scale designed to reveal?
Reveal attitudes towards other racial groups
What did Adorno conclude about the traits people with an authoritarian personality possess?
-More obedient compared to other people
-Respect social hierarchies and authority figures
-View the world rigidly and inflexibly (black and white thinking)
Who are people who have an AP disdainful (view them as infereior and undeserving of respect) of? - Give an example
-Anybody who is seen as weak
Who else are they disdainful of?
-those whom they consider to be ‘beneath’ them in the social hierarchy eg. people who are mentally ill, homeless, of a different race/ethnicity/culture
In terms of social influence, how does the child adopt an AP?
-Child learns the behaviours and attitudes of their parents
-So they eventually identify with them
Explain the procedure of Elms and Milgram’s replication study and use of the F scale
-Took 20 participants who had previously refused to go up to 450 v (low obedience)+ 20 participants who did (high obedience)
-Particpants completed questionares, one of which being the F scale
-Some of the questions were open and asked about the partcipants relationship with their parents AND thhe relationship between them and the experimenter when they took part in milgrams study
What were the findings from Elms and Milgram?
-High-obedience participants scored higher on the F-scale than the low-obedience participants
-High-obedience participants reported that they did not feel close to their father when they were growing up
-also reported feelings of admiration for the experimenter when they took part in Milgram’s study
What did Elms and Milgram conclude?
There is a relationship between childhood experience, authoritarian personality and high obedience
Give a strength (strength of questionnaires)
-Adorno’s F-scale questionnaire is replicable
-It uses standardised questions
-All participants answer the same questions, which can be used repeatedly with other samples, thus generating robust quantitative data
-Would also be able to draw conclusions which would be more representative of the whole population (in comparison to Adorno’s original sample), which in today’s society is much more diverse with a range of classes and ethnicities
-large sample size and quantitative data mean that the scale can be tested for reliability, e.g. using the test-retest method
Give a strength (additional explanation)
-Elms and Milgram add a different perspective/ explanation to Milgram’s original conclusion
-Milgram originally concluded that obedience is the result of situational factors ( including proximity, uniform and location)
-E+M acknowledge the role of dispositional factors in obedience
-Adds more dimension to Milgram’s original research
-This observation helps to address any gaps in his original conclusions
Give a limitation (limitation of questionnaires)
-Using a questionnaire to obtain data is not a100% valid method
-People may lie because they can, as no one will know; additionally, it is a low-stakes task which doesn’t, ultimately, matter to them
-People may misremember details, particularly if the events happened many years ago (eg. childhood experiences or punishments)
-People may be prone to social desirability bias, providing responses which show them in their ‘best light’, i.e. their ideal self
-The researcher also may be prone to bias (i.e. it may include sources of bias, prejudice, and assumptions), these may be unconscious and unimportant, but the questionnaire will still be impacted
-Although it is almost impossible to take a wholly neutral stance when measuring human behaviour
Give a limitation (reductionist and deterministic)
-The theory is overly simplistic as not everyone who shows high levels of obedience has an authoritarian personality (also therefore generalises)
-An over-simplistic theory is both reductionist and deterministic
-The theory reduces a complex variable (personality) to a score on a scale
-It also does not account for other factors that may impact this score (other than personality)
-For example Middendorp and Meleon found that less educated people are more likely to show AP traits so levels of education may impact obedience
-The theory determines that if you possess specific personality traits then you will be obedient, regardless of the situation
