Social influence - Dispositional explanations for obedience

Question 1

How did Adorno describe the authoritarian personality?

Answer 1

• In response to anti-Semitism displayed in World War 2, Adorno argued that high levels of obedience was a psychological disorder linked to personality (Dispositional)
• This disagreed with Milgram, who suggested that all people are capable of extreme obedience

Question 2

How did Adorno create the F-scale?

Answer 2

• Adorno studied personality with questionnaires
• The questions revealed unconscious feelings towards minority groups
• This lead to Adorno developing the F-scale (F for fascism)
• One of the nine factors that was measured was “Authoritarian aggression” which is a tendency to be on the lookout for, for and to condemn, reject and punish people who violate conventional values

Question 3

What were the traits of people who scored highly on the F-scale?

Answer 3

• People who scored highly on the F-scale showed high respect for people with a higher social status
• They would also have fixed stereotypes for other groups
• They identified with “Strong” people and disliked “Weak” people

Question 4

How did Adorno explain that childhood parenting affected a persons likelihood to display an authoritarian personality?

Answer 4

• Adorno suggested that people with an authoritarian personality were shaped early in life by strict authoritarian parenting with harsh physical punishments
• Adorno suggested that anger from the persons childhood was displaced onto others, mainly minority groups

Question 5

How did Milgram’s experiment support the idea of an authoritarian personality and using the F-scale to measure fascism?

Answer 5

-Elmes and Milgram interviewed participants who took part in the first 4 Milgram studies showed those that had shocked to the full 450volts scored higher on the F-scale than those that refused to continue

Question 6

What is a disadvantage of using the authoritarian personality to explain levels of obedience?

Answer 6

• The link between authoritarian personalities and following orders is correlational
• This means there could be a third factor, such as lower income or poor education that results in both behaviours

Question 7

What is a disadvantage of using the authoritarian personality to explain levels of obedience?

Answer 7

• The original F-scale questionnaire lacks internal validity
• This is because all the questions were written in one direction, meaning that agreeing to all the questions will label someone as authoritarian
• This is known as response bias

Question 8

What is a disadvantage of using the authoritarian personality to explain levels of obedience?

Answer 8

-The authoritarian personality can be seen as a left-wing theory and inherently biased, this is because it identifies many individuals with a conservative political viewpoint as having a psychological disorder

Question 9

What is right and left wing politics?

Answer 9

Right-wing = Conservative
Left-wing = Labour