Dispositional Explanation For Obedience Flashcards
There is research support for the authoritarian personality as a dispositional explanation for obedience
E – Milgram and Elms found a positive correlation between F-scale scores and obedience within the Milgram experiment.
E – This supports the authoritarian personality explanation, as Adorno’s theory suggests that individuals with high F-scale scores possess authoritarian traits, such as authoritarian submission. Since this entails unquestioning respect for authority, this would lead them to follow the experimenter’s instruction to shock the learner in the Milgram experiment.
However, as the findings are correlational, causation cannot be established. While obedient participants showed more authoritarian traits, we cannot conclude that these traits cause obedience, only that they are linked.
For most social psychologists, dispositional explanations, like authoritarian personality, can only offer a limited explanation for obedience
E – Social psychologists tend to view the social situation as paramount in explanations for social behaviour. Personality is considered as a moderating factor, and one with less significance in ‘strong’ social situations compared to ‘weak’ social situations
E – This means researchers may first examine the role of situational variables, like those investigated by Milgram (e.g., location or the authority figure’s uniform) to explain obedience before considering the role of authoritarian personality to account for individual differences in obedience within these situations. However, this doesn’t entirely undermine authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience, as individual differences in obedience do exist within any given social situation, and these may require the sort of dispositional explanation provided by authoritarian personality.
L – Therefore, authoritarian personality may play a less significant – though not unimportant - role in explaining why people obey than situational explanations.
Researchers have criticised the scientific credibility of the psychodynamic basis for authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience
E – Adorno’s explanation for the development of an authoritarian personality depended on psychodynamic ideas, like unconscious motivations and defence mechanisms that protect the unconscious from distress.
E – However, modern researchers have largely abandoned the psychodynamic approach on the grounds that it is unscientific. Psychodynamic concepts like repression, displacement and unconscious desires – all of which are used by Adorno in his explanation of authoritarian personality – have proven difficult to investigate objectively using the empirical method. Moreover, since Freud developed these psychodynamic ideas by interpreting his patients’ experiences (e.g., their dreams), then psychodynamic research lacks objectivity, another key feature of science
L - Consequently, Adorno’s dispositional explanation of obedience through the authoritarian personality is no longer regarded as credible as it depends on ideas from the unscientific psychodynamic approach.
There are issues with the research behind authoritarian personality’s explanation for obedience
E - Authoritarian personality is measured using the F-scale. This questionnaire worded all the items in the same direction, meaning every time you agreed with an item, your score on the F scale increased
E - It’s possible that people who scored highly (indicating they had authoritarian personality) may actually have had a type of response bias called acquiescence bias, meaning they were biased to agree with statements, regardless of whether they believe them. This means it’s difficult to know whether someone who scores highly on the F-scale genuinely has an authoritarian personality, or whether they just like to agree with statements
L - If the supporting research behind authoritarian personality is flawed, then authoritarian personality cannot be trusted as an explanation for obedience.
