SOCIAL INFLUENCE - dispositional explanations for obedience Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in SOCIAL INFLUENCE - dispositional explanations for obedience Deck (10)
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1
Q

who proposed the ‘authoritarian personality’?

A
  • ADORNO

assumed there must be a personal disposition which is why some obeyed and some rebelled to MILGRAM

2
Q

who did ADORNO investigate?

A
  • white
  • middle-class
  • americans
3
Q

how many people did ADORNO investigate?

A
  • 2000
4
Q

what did ADORNO investigate with his participants? and how did he do this?

A
  • their unconscious attitudes to various racial groups

- used the ‘fascism scale/f-scale) to measure authoritarian personality

5
Q

what did ADORNO find?

A
  • those with authoritarian leanings and scored highly on the f-scale identified with strong people and were contemptuous of the weak
  • they were conscious of status and class
  • they had a cognitive style with no ‘blurred lines’ and fixated on stereotypes
  • positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
6
Q

what are characteristics of the authoritarian personality?

A
  • especially obedient
  • conservative attitudes
  • inflexible
  • uncomfortable with uncertainty
7
Q

what is the origin of the authoritarian personality?

A
  • formed in childhood
  • strict parenting, with harsh discipline and highly critical of failures
    (conditional love)
  • fears are displaced onto people who are perceived as weaker
    (echoes of psychodynamic approach)
8
Q

EVALUATION

what did CHRISTIE AAND JAHODA say? and how does this relate to the authoritarian personality?

A
  • the f-scale is politically biased towards right-wing ideology
  • state it ignores left-wing authoritarianism who appreciate obedience
    (russian bolshevism)
    so…
  • not a comprehensive dispositional explanation as it did not account for the whole political spectrum
9
Q

EVALUATION

what does GREENSTEIN say? and how does this relate to the authoritarian personality?

A
  • it is a ‘comedy of methodological errors’
  • all the questions are worded in the same direction: may not be authoritarian but ‘acquiescers’
    (acquiescence bias)
  • ADORNO interviewed them about childhood experiences when he knew their scores and the hypothesis
    so…
  • biases reduce the internal validity of the explanation
10
Q

EVALUATION

correlation is not causation

A
  • many strong correlations formed between the characteristics, obedience rates and origins in relation to the authoritarian personality
  • no cause and effect relationship can be claimed here
    so. ..
  • lack of internal validity