SOCIAL INFLUENCE - dispositional explanations for obedience

Question 1

who proposed the ‘authoritarian personality’?

Answer 1

• ADORNO

assumed there must be a personal disposition which is why some obeyed and some rebelled to MILGRAM

Question 2

who did ADORNO investigate?

Answer 2

• white
• middle-class
• americans

Question 3

how many people did ADORNO investigate?

Answer 3

• 2000

Question 4

what did ADORNO investigate with his participants? and how did he do this?

Answer 4

• their unconscious attitudes to various racial groups

- used the ‘fascism scale/f-scale) to measure authoritarian personality

Question 5

what did ADORNO find?

Answer 5

• those with authoritarian leanings and scored highly on the f-scale identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak
• they were conscious of status and class
• they had a cognitive style with no ‘blurred lines’ and fixated on stereotypes
• positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

Question 6

what are characteristics of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 6

• especially obedient
• conservative attitudes
• inflexible
• uncomfortable with uncertainty

Question 7

what is the origin of the authoritarian personality?

Answer 7

• formed in childhood
• strict parenting, with harsh discipline and highly critical of failures
  (conditional love)
• fears are displaced onto people who are perceived as weaker
  (echoes of psychodynamic approach)

Question 8

EVALUATION

what did CHRISTIE AAND JAHODA say? and how does this relate to the authoritarian personality?

Answer 8

• the f-scale is politically biased towards right-wing ideology
• state it ignores left-wing authoritarianism who appreciate obedience
  (russian bolshevism)
  so…
• not a comprehensive dispositional explanation as it did not account for the whole political spectrum

Question 9

EVALUATION

what does GREENSTEIN say? and how does this relate to the authoritarian personality?

Answer 9

• it is a ‘comedy of methodological errors’
• all the questions are worded in the same direction: may not be authoritarian but ‘acquiescers’
  (acquiescence bias)
• ADORNO interviewed them about childhood experiences when he knew their scores and the hypothesis
  so…
• biases reduce the internal validity of the explanation

Question 10

EVALUATION

correlation is not causation

Answer 10

• many strong correlations formed between the characteristics, obedience rates and origins in relation to the authoritarian personality
• no cause and effect relationship can be claimed here
  so. ..
• lack of internal validity