Obedience: Dispositional Explanations Flashcards
(14 cards)
What is the authoritarian personality?
A type of personality susceptible to obeying those in authority, submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors.
Who investigated the causes of the obedient personality?
Adorno et al (1950).
What was the procedure in Adorno et al’s study?
Involved looking at unconscious attitudes of 2000 middle class white americans to other races using several scales such as the Potential for Facism scale (F-scale)
Still use F-scale to measure authoritarian personality
What scale was created to investigate authoritarian personality?
Potential for fascism scale (F-scale).
What was the findings of Adorno et al’s study?
Authoritarian leaning people identified with and excessively respected/served strong people and were contemptuous of the weak,
Had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about others and were very conscious of their and others status
What correlation was found in people with authoritarian leanings?
Strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.
List characteristics of authoritarian personality.
- Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race, and gender
- Belief in strong and powerful leaders
- Inflexible outlook with no grey areas
What did Adorno conclude about the origins of authoritarian personality?
It is formed in childhood from harsh parenting such as conditional love (based on childs behaviour) that creates resentment and hostility that cannot be expressed to parents due to fear
Instead displaced onto others who are ‘weaker’ (scapegoating)
What parenting style contributes to the development of an authoritarian personality?
Strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards, severe criticism of failure.
What is a strength of authoritarian personality related to Milgram?
Milgram conducted interviews with a small sample of fully obedient participants, scored highly on the F scale suggesting a link between obedience and authoritarian personality
Whats a counterpoint to the strength of authoritarian personality?
May simply be a correlation between 2 measured variables, impossible to say authoritarian personality causes obedience
What limitation is noted regarding the explanation of obedience using personality?
It cannot explain obedience in the majority of the population as pre war Germany, millions displayed obedient and racist behaviour. Must have differed in personality as its unlikely theyre all authoritarian
What’s a limitation of authoritarian personality regarding F scale?
Christie and Jahoda argue its a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality as it measures tendency to right wing ideology. They highlight the existence of left wing authoritarianism that emphasise obedience to legitimate political authority.
Adornos explanation cannot account for obedience to authoeiry across whole political spectrum
What’s another limitation of authoritarian personality regarding methodology?
According to Greenstein the F-scale is a ‘comedy of methodological errors’ as every item is worded in the same ‘direction’ making it likely to score high if you tick the same collumn
Scale could be measuring tendency to agree with everything (acquiescence bias) highlighting correlation isnt causation
