Dispositional Explenations For Obedience Flashcards
Dispositional explanations are
Explanations of behaviour that focus on internal characteristics of the individual
Why did Adorno want to do his study
Because he was interested in investigating the willingness of Nazi soldiers to kill members of minority groups in WW2
What are Adornos claims
-Particular personality types are more likely to obey authority
-A high level of obedience is a psychological disorder
What was Adorno’s sample
More than 2000 middle-class, white Americans.
Adorno’s procedure
Study unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
They developed an ‘F’ scale (potential-for-fascism) to measure the
relationship between a person’s personality type and prejudiced beliefs.
A question being “obedience and respect for
authority are the most important virtues for children to learn”
Adorno’s findings
scoring highly on the ‘F’ scale means that you identify with ‘strong’ people and are more
disapproving of the ‘weak’.
Your very conscious of yours and others’ status, showing obedience to those of higher status eg.authority
Cognitive reasoning of people high on the F scale
Black and white thinking
fixed distinctive stereotypes of others
strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
Authoritarian Personality
characterized by strict adherence to
conventional values and a belief in absolute
obedience or submission to authority
the authoritarian personality can originate from
Harsh parenting
-Strict discipline,
-expectation of
absolute loyalty,
-severe criticisms,
-not enough love
harsh parenting can develop into
-Fear of parents so that they are excessively respectful of
authority figures
-Hatred of parent which is then displaced onto others that they deem as weaker
AO3 pos
Milgram’s and Elms research support
They found that those who went up to 450V scored higher on tests of authoritarian personalities
These findings support Adornos claim but only correlationaly
AO3 Neg
Limited explanation
-explanation of obedience for individual
personality is difficult to explain obedient
behavior in the majority of a country’s population
-pre-war Germany, millions of individuals all
displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behavior, they cannot all have had the same personality!
AO3 Neg
Methodological problems
Interviews were vulnerable to interviewer bias as the interviewer was aware of the aims of the study.
Knowing the test score of the interviewee in advance also caused a bias
