The Authoritarian Personality Flashcards
What type of explanation for obedience is the authoritarian personality?
A dispositional explanation.
What is the authoritarian personality?
A distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience or submission to authority.
What was the F scale?
- ‘California F scale’ or ‘Fascism scale’.
- 1947
- Measure of authoritarian traits or tendencies
-Adorno
What were the statements involved in the Fa scale like and what did it mean if you agreed with these statements?
- ‘Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn’
- ‘Rules are there for people to follow, not change’
- Agreeing with these was indicative of the Authoritarian personality- rigid thinkers who obeyed authority, saw the world as black and white and enforced strict adherence to social rules and heirarchy.
What did Adorno et al discover about coring high on the F scale and parenting style?
- Those who scored high on the F scale tended to have been raised by parents who had used an authoritarian parenting style (including the use of physical punishment). Growing up with this system means that people assume that this system is the norm. If children grow up in a particularly authoritarian family, with a strong emphasis on obedience, they acquire the same authoritarian attitudes through a process of learning and intimidation.
How did Robert Altemeyer refine the concept of the Authoritarian personality?
- Identified a cluster of three of the original personality variables that he referred to as right-wing authoritarianism. (RWA). According to this, high- RWA people posses three important personality characteristics that predispose them to obedience:
- Conventionalism: an adherence to conventional norms and values
- Authoritarian Aggression: aggressive feelings towards people who violate these norms
- Authoritarian Submission: uncritical submission to legitimate authorities
How did Altemeyer test the relationship between RWA and obedience?
- Experiment: Particpants were ordered to give themselves increasing levels of shock when they made mistakes on a learning task.
- Significant correlation between RWA scores and the level of shocks that participants were willing to give themselves.
- Also a large red button above which had a warning above saying ‘Do not push this button unless you were instructed to do so’
- When the experiment was over, the experimenter ordered participants to push the button to administer an extra strong shock as punishment for not trying.
Participant’s level of RWA was irrelevant in this instruction as the vast majority did what they were told without question.
Key Study: Who investigated into the F scale and its effects on obedience and when?
Elms and Milgram- 1966
Key Study: What was the procedure of Elms and Milgram’s study into the Authoritarian Personality?
- Follow-up study using participants who had previously taken part in Milgram’s study 2 months before.
- Selected 20 ‘obedient’ Participants (continued to the final shock level) and 20 ‘defiant’ Participants (refused to continue at some point).
- Both completed the MMPI scale (measuring a range of personality variables) and the California F scale to specifically measure their levels of authoritarianism.
- Also asked about their relationships with their parents during their childhood and their attitude to the ‘experimenter’ (authority figure) and ‘learner’ during their participation in Milgram’s study.
Key Study: What were the findings of the Elms and Milgram study?
- Found very little difference between obedient and defiant participants in the MMPI variables.
- Found higher levels of authoritarianism among those participants classified as obedient compared with defiant.
- Significant differences between obedient and defiant participants that were consistent with the idea of the Authoritarianpersonality.
- E.G. obedient participants reported being less close to their fathers during childhood name would describe them in distinctively more negative terms.
- Obedient figures saw the experimenter as clearly more admirable and the learner as less so.
Evaluation: Social Context Is More Important
- Although Milgram accepted that there might be a dispositional basis to obedience and disobedience, he did not believe that the evidence for this was particularly strong.
- Milgram showed that the variations in the social context of the study (proximity of the victim, location) were the primary cause of differences in participants levels of obedience, not variations in personality.
- He believed that the specific social situation participants found themselves in caused them to obey or resist regardless of their personalities. Relying on an explanation of obedience based purely on authoritarianism lacks the flexibility to account for these variations.
Evaluation: Differences Between Authoritarian And Obedient Participants
-Elms & Milgram’s research presented some differences in the characteristics of the Authoritarian personality and the characteristics of obedient participants.
- When asked about their upbringing, many participants that were fully obedient reported having a good relationship with their parents, rather than having grown up in an overly strict family environment associated with the Authoritarian Personality.
- Given the large amount of participants who were fully obedient in Milgram’s study, the vast majority, according to the Authoritarian personality should have grown up in a hardship environment with a punitive father
Evaluation: Education may determine authoritarianism and obedience.
- Research has generally found that less-educated people are consistently more authoritarian than the well-educated.
- Milgram found that participants with lower levels of education tended to be more obedient than those with higher levels of education. Suggests that instead of authoritarianism causing obedience, lack of education could be responsible for both authoritarianism and obedience.
- Even after education level was statistically controlled for in the Elms and Milgram study, the more obedient subjects were still more authoritarian on the F scale.
