Social Influence - Dispositional explanation for obedience

Question 1

Dispositional variables

Answer 1

• Explanation of individual behaviour caused by internal characteristics that reside within the individuals personality

Question 2

Characteristics of effect of dispositional variables

Answer 2

• Especially obedient to authority
• Extreme respect + submissiveness for authority
• Show contempt for those perceived as lower social status
• Highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race, gender
• Inflexible + stubborn

Question 3

Adorno et al - Authoritarian Personality

Answer 3

Type of personality susceptible to obeying people in positions of authority
- Personality forms in childhood due to harsh parenting
- Strict discipline, high expectations, loyalty, criticism of failure
- Conditional love
- Create hate + resentment in a child, cannot express these towards the parents
- Displace feelings onto people who are perceived to be weaker - scapegoating

Question 4

Adorno et al - study

Answer 4

Procedure:
- 2000 white middle-class Americans + unconscious attitudes to other racial groups
- Developed F-scale (fascist scale) to measure authoritarian personality

Findings:
- Scored high - identified with ‘strong’ people + more contemptuous of the ‘weak’
- Conscious of their own social status + others
- Show respect + admiration to those in higher positions in social hierarchy
- Fixed + distinctive stereotypes about certain groups of people
- Strong correlation between authoritarianism + prejudice

Question 5

Support - Milgram and Elms

Answer 5

• Conducted interviews with small sample of fully obedient ppts - scored highly on F-scale
• Correlation between authoritarian personality + obedience to authority

Question 6

Limitations

Answer 6

Political bias:
- F-Scale measures tendency towards right wing ideology
- Politically biased interpretation - cannot account for whole political spectrum

Correlation not causation:
- Harsh parenting style not the direct cause for authoritarian personality - other extraneous variables play a role

Methodological problems:
- Can get a high score by ticking the same boxes down one side of the page
-When Adorno interviewed participants about their childhood, he already knew their scores on the F-Scale and whether it matched with the hypothesis of the study