Dispositional explanation Flashcards
(17 cards)
What does disposition mean?
Personality
what does the dispositional explanation suggest?
Suggests that it is do with the person rather than the social context that causes them to obey
Define authoritarian personality
A distinct personality patter by strict adherence to conventional values and beliefs in absolute obedience or submission to authority
What did Adorno create?
- The F (Facisim) Scale
- wanted to measure obedient (authoritarian) behaviour
- investigate the cause of obedient behaviour
How did Adorno investigate obedient behaviour and what did the F-Scale contain?
- using the F-scale Adorno investigated 2000
white middle-class Americans - F-scale contained statements such as ‘obedience and respect for authority figures are the most important virtues children should learn’
- Agreeing with statements above are indicative of authoritarian personality
What was the findings of Adorno’s study?
People with authoritarian personality/learnings:
- identified with ‘strong’ people and was contemptuous of the weak
- more conscious of their own and others status
- respect those of higher status
- more conventional attitudes
What did Adorno conclude?
- Concluded that authoritarian personality developed in childhood due to hard style parenting
- Children with an authoritarian personality were more likely to be raised with parents who had authoritarian personality
What did authoritarian personality parents raise their children with?
- Extremely strict parenting
- Expectation of absolute loyalty
- High standards
- Conditional love
- Criticism of perceived failings
What did Adorno argue that authoritarian parenting style create for children?
- hostility and resentment
- cannot show this anger towards the parent so it is displaced onto people seen as inferior (thus leading to them being contemptuous of the weak and the importance of social status)
Who refined the concept of authoritarian personality?
Altemeyer
What did Altemeyer idenitfy?
- three of the original personality variables he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism
What are the three original personality variables?
- Conventionalism: adherence to conventional norms
- Authoritarian aggression: aggressive feelings to anyone who goes against these norms and values
- Authoritarian submission: uncritical submission to legitimate authorities
A03 - Research support for authoritarian personality
- Elms and Milgram wanted to see if obedient participants in Milgram’s study were more likely to show authoritarian personality traits
- their sample consisted of 20 obedient ppts who administered 450v
- and 20 disobedient ppts, ppl who refused to continue
- each ppts completed several personality questionnaires, including Adorno’s F-scale to measure their authoritarian personality
- found obedient ppts scored higher on the F-scale, in comparison to disobedient ppts
- also revealed that obedient ppts admired experimenter in Milgram’s experiment, which was opposite of disobedient ppts
- E + M concluded that the obedient ppts in his original research displayed higher levels of the authoritarian personality , in comparison to the disobedient ppts
- therefore this supports Adorno’s findings and this increases the validity of authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience
A03 - A limitation of this explanation is that social context may be more important
- Milgram showed that variation in the social context of his study (proximity, location, presence of disobedient peers), were primary cause of differences in ppts levels of obedience, not variations in personality
- He believed the specific social situation ppts found themselves in caused them to obey or resist regardless of their personality
- Relying on an explanation that focuses on authoritarianism lacks the flexibility to account for these variations (Milgram)
- This means that it is unlikely that authoritarian personality alone can explain all obedience behaviour, suggesting it is an incomplete explanation
What is the social identity theory?
- We get our self esteem from the groups we belong to
- Once you have you social identity, you either perceive others as ingroup or outgroip
- you adopt the ingroup values/behaviour/attitudes
- view you social identity as superior to others
A03 - May be criticised as being a limited explanation of obedience
- Any obedience explanation in terms of individual personality will find it hard to explain obedient behaviour in a majority of a country’s population
- For example, pre-war Germany, millions of people displayed antisemitic, obedient and racist behaviour
- This was despite the fact they all differed in personality
- Seems unlikely that they could all possess an authoritarian personality
- This is a limitation of Adorno’s theory as it is clear that an alternative explanation is much more realistic - the social identity theory
- The majority of German people identified with the antisemitic Nazi state and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’ of Jews
- Therefore, authoritarian behaviour cannot explain all obedient behaviour
A03 - Adorno’s explanation of obedience may also be criticised by the political bias of the F-scale used
- Christie and Jahoda argued that this is politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality which may ignore the existence of left-wing authoritarianism
- e.g. Russian bolshevism or Chinese Maoism
- extreme right wing and left wing ideologies have much in common - they both emphasise the importance of complete obedience to a legitimate political authority
- This is a limitation because it fails to account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum
