The dispositional explanation for obedience: The authoritarian personality

Question 1

What is a dispositional explanation?

Answer 1

One that focuses on the individuals own personal characteristics or traits (their disposition).

Question 2

What is the authoritarian personality?

Answer 2

A personality type that is especially susceptible to obeying people in authority; they are hostile to people in inferior status but obedient to people in higher status.

Question 3

How is it argued that an authoritarian personality forms?

Answer 3

Through strict and rigid parenting during childhood.

Question 4

Who conducted research into the authoritarian personality ?

Answer 4

Adorno et al

Question 5

What year did Adorno et al conduct their research?

Answer 5

1950

Question 6

What did Adorno et al aim to test

Answer 6

If certain personality types make people more obedient.

Question 7

What was the sample of Adorno’s study?

Answer 7

2000 middle class Americans

Question 8

What did Adorno use to measure the Authoritarian Personality?

Answer 8

The Fascism Scale (F-Scale)

Question 9

What were the respondents asked about in the F-Scale?

Answer 9

Their strength of agreement or disagreement on topics such as religion, ethnicity, politics, economics and their moral values.

Question 10

What happened to the highest scoring participants?

Answer 10

They were further interviewed in more depth.

Question 11

What did Adorno et al find?

Answer 11

That people with an authoritarian personality had fixed, stereotypical views about other groups and had no ‘fuzziness’ between categories of people.

Question 12

What were the people who scored highest on the F-Scale like?

Answer 12

They identified with ‘strong’ people and disliked weak; they were very conscious of their own and others’ status and showed excessive respect to those of higher status.

Question 13

What was there a strong positive correlation between?

Answer 13

Authoritarianism and prejudice.

Question 14

What did Adorno et al conclude?

Answer 14

That people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority because they need strong leaders to enforce traditional values.

Question 15

What are the 5 evaluation points for the authoritarian personality explanation?

Answer 15

+ Elms and Milgram (1966)

• Fails to explain obedience in the majority of a countries population (Nazi Germany)
• Cannot account for situational factors
• Cannot establish cause and effect
• Interviewers knew the hypothesis and the interviewee’s F-scale test scores.

Question 16

There is evidence to support the authoritarian personality from Elms and Milgram (1966)

Answer 16

E: They found that, when 20 obedient participants from milgram’s original obedience research (who had deliver 450v) were questioned using the F-Scale, the obedient participants scored higher on authoritarianism.
E: The obedient participants also reported viewing the experimenter as more admirable and the learner less so.
L: Supports the findings of Adorno et al that the authoritarian personality makes us more likely to obey.

Question 17

One problem with the idea of a particularly obedient personality type is that it fails to explain obedience in the majority of a countries population.

Answer 17

E: In pre-war Germany, millions of people all displayed obedient and racist behaviour despite all having very different personalities.
L: -ve Although the ‘authoritarian personality’ explanation may explain a number of specific cases of obedience, it fails to explain obedience on a larger social scale.