The effect of dispositional factors on behaviour / locus of control/ self esteem

Question 1

What is the dispositional factors theory

Answer 1

• Things inside a person (personality traits ) that effect how they behave or conform

Question 2

What 5 theories do dispositional factors include?

Answer 2

• Locus of control
• Authoritarian personality traits
• morality
• brain
• self - esteem

Question 3

How would someone with low self esteem perceive themselves compared to someone with high self esteem

Answer 3

• Someone w low self esteem will generally have a low opinion of themselves and what they do
• Someone w high self esteem will feel confident in who they are and how they behave

Question 4

How would self esteem effect likelihood of conforming?

Answer 4

• Someone with low self esteem is more likely to conform due to lack of believe in self ability whereas someone with high self esteem is more likely to have confidence in their ideas and beliefs and more likely to maintain independent views.

Question 5

Experiments to support link between self-esteem and conformity

Answer 5

Kurosawa (1993) performed a recreation of Asch’s line experiment is Japan and found that under high pressure, participant w low self esteem were more likely to conform.

Tainaka et al (2014) found that female participant who were all students at the uni were more likely to agree with a co-witness to a crime and conform to their view point if they had low self esteem.
Tainaka acknowledged that male participants may have behaved diff.

Question 6

Informational conformity can be explained with what?

Answer 6

• self esteem

Question 7

Who developed the idea of locus of control

Answer 7

• Julian rotter .He suggested there was 2 types of locus of control : internal and external

Question 8

Define internal locus of control

Answer 8

• They believe they have the ability to control their decisions about their own lives and any successes or failure is due to the choices they make.
  -They tend to be more confident and when failure comes around, they blame themselves
• tend to be middle aged

Question 9

Define external locus of control

Answer 9

• They believe they have no or little control over their lives,they may believe others but control and consequently they have no choice but to obey them.
• Tend to be young or elderly
• Bradley and web found that internal locus of control increases with age