Lesson 9: Obedience- Dispositional factors- Authoritatian Personality

Question 1

What is obedience?

Answer 1

-a person acting in response to a direct order from percieved authority
- person wouldnt have done it otherwise

Question 2

Authoritarian personality

Answer 2

• Adorno (1950)
• claims that individuals personality characteristics determine their behaviour, not situational influences in the environment
• says they’re more likely to obey authority figures

Question 3

Authoritarian personality traits (SHPICLD)

Answer 3

• servile towards higher status
• hostile towards lower status
• preoccupied with power
• inflexible in their beliefs and values
• conformist and conventional
• likely to categorise people as ‘us’ or ‘them’
• dogmatic (intolerant of ambiguity)

Question 4

Adornos explanation of the development of authoritarian personality

Answer 4

• harsh discipline recieved during upbringing from parents
• creates feelings of hostility towards weaker ppl who cant fight back
• cant take anger out on parents as they fear them, so they act in a subsmissive way towards them
• gets extented to all authority figures

Question 5

Fascism

Answer 5

A governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and critcism, regimenting all industry, commerce etc.. and emphasising an aggressive nationalism and often racism.

Question 6

Adorno questionnaire F scale findings

Answer 6

Tested more than 2000, middle-class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
- found there was a relationship between authoritarian personality and scoring high on the F scale

Question 7

Strengths of dispositional explanations- the authoritarian personality- Research Support Elms and Milgram- procedure

Answer 7

Research Support

• there is some for a link between being obedient to authority and having an authoritarian personality
• Elms and Milgram carried out follow up study using pps who from Milgrams experiment 2 months ago
• 20 obedient pps who went to 450V, and 20 disobedient who didn’t
• all completed an MMPI scale and an F scale
• pps also asked open ended Qs about relationship with father and attitudes to the experimenter and learner during previous experiment

Question 8

Elms and Milgrams (1966) findings

Answer 8

• little difference between obedient and disobedient participants in terms of the MMPI scale
• obedient pps scored higher on F scale so stronger authoritarian personality
• obedient participants were more likely to report being less close with their fathers, and to describe them in negative terms
• they were also more likely to perceive the experimenter (authority figure) as admirable
• study shows that the authoritarian personality is a strong dispositional explanation of obedience to authority and supports the case of there being a link between the F scale and obedience

Question 9

Study supporting authoritarian personality- Miller (1975) and Altemeyer (1981)

Answer 9

Miller
- found high F scale scores more likely to obey order to hold electric wiring whilst doing a test
- shows they’ll obey authority even if harming themselves, so must be due to personality

Altemeyer
- same findings, but he asked pps to shock themselves if they made a mistake
- study shows high F scale scores more likely to shock themselves further demonstrating a link between authoritarian personality and obedience

Question 10

Weakness of authoritarian personality- limited explanation

Answer 10

Limited explanation
- doesn’t explain why majority of e.g. Germany is obedient but not all have authoritarian personality
- Social Identity Theory is better alternative and explains obedience whereby the Germans identified with the anti-semetic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews
- i.e. the Social Identity Theory is a more relevant explanation of obedience than the authoritarian personality

Question 11

Weakness of authoritarian personality- methodological problems

Answer 11

Authoritarian personality explanation is based on flawed methodology

• adorno used F scale to measure authoritarian personality
• each item on the questionnaire is worded in same direction meaning it is fairly easy to get a high score on the authoritarian personality
• questions are all closed meaning there is no room for explanation
• although Adorno did interview his participants about their childhood experiences, he already knew their score on the questionnaire meaning that he would have showed interviewer bias