dispositional explanations for obedience (authoritarian personality)
Adorno (1950)
high obedience = mental disorder and wanted to find cause in personaility
procedure
2000 middle class white americans
study their unconscious attitude towards racial groups
done through several scales
the potential for fascism scale (f scale)
still used to measure authoritarian personality
obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn
findings
high on f scale = authoritarian
tended to identify with strong people who were disrespectful of the weak
very aware of everyones status
very respectful of authority
no fuzziness in their cognitive style
fixed stereotypes
positive correlation with prejudice
characteristics
obedient
respect for authority
dismissive of people with lower social status
conventional veiws towards sexuality, race and gender
veiw society as going down hill and needing a strong leader to enforce traditional values
love of counrty
inflexible outlook
everything right or wrong and dont like uncertainty
origin
formed in childhood due to harsh parenting
strict dicipline
absolute loyalty
impossibly high standards
sevre critisism
love depends on behaviour
creates hostility in the child but cant express this to parents due to retaliation
so fears displaced onto those they see as weaker called scapegoating
also explains obedience to higher authority as they dislike them for being inferior like their parents
psychodynamic explanation
evaluation
correlation not conclusion
Milgram and elm's (1966)
interviewed small group of obedient pts who scored highly on the f scale
cant say authoritarian personality causes someone to be obedient because they occur together. may be due to a third factor
e.g. lower level education
limited explanation
obedience due to personality will be hard to apply to everyone as they are different
e.g. pre war Germans all showed obedient racist behaviour but hard to say they all had authoritarian personality
suggests another explanation may be more realistic (social identity)
Goldhagen - many germans identified with Nazi state and scapegoated jews as an outgroup
political bias
methodological problems
f scale measures tendency towards extreme right wing polotics
however extreme left wing polotics share the same attributes such as complete obedience (chinese Maoism)
not a comprehensive explanation as it cannot explain obedience for whole political spectrum
Greenstein (1969) said the f scale was a "comedy of methodological errors"
every question worded in the same direction
can be authoritarian by choosing same option
so people agreeing could be acquiescers and f scale measuring tendency to agree
also conducted interveiws about childhood experiences
by that point however they new their score on the test and the hypothesis of the study
this could lead to researcher bias as they was their hypothesis to be right so unconsciously looked for signs of strict parenting in the childhood of those who scored high
therefore the findings cant be considered fact due to the poor methods