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Obedience (dispositional explanation) - Coggle Diagram
Obedience (dispositional explanation)
the authoritarian personality
high obedience is pathological:
Adorno et al (1950)
that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find its cause in the individual's personality
extreme respect for authority and contempt for 'inferiors':
Adorno et al concluded that people with an authoritarian personality are especially obedient to authority
they have exaggerated respect for authority and submissiveness to it
they express contempt for people of inferior social status
authoritarians tend to follow orders and view ;other' groups as responsible for society's ills
originates in childhood
(e.g overly strict parenting)
authoritarian personality froms in childhoos thruigh harsh parenting, extremely strict discipline, expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and serve criticism
it is also characterised by conditional love, parents love depends entirely on how their child behaves
hostility is displaced onto social inferiors
these experiences create vresentment asnd hostility in the child, but they cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because they fear reprisals
so the feelings are displaced onto others who are weaker (scapegoating)
this is a psdychodynsamic explanation
Adorno et al (1950) The Authoritarian Personality
procedure
the study investigated unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups of more than 2000 middle class white americans
several scales were developed, including the potential for fascism scale (F-Scale)
examples from F- scale included:
obedience and respect for authority are the most importnat virtues for children to learn
there is hardly anything lower than a person who does not feel great love gratitude and respect for his parents
findings
authoritarians (who scored high on the F-sclae) identified with stong people and were contemptuous of the weak
they were consious of their own and others status, showing excessive respect and deference to those of higher status
Authoritarian people also had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories of people, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups
evaluation
strength
: authoritarians are obedient
Elms and Milgram (1966) interviewed 20 fully obedient participants from MIlgram's original obedience studies
they scored significantly higher on the F-scale than a comparison group of 20 disobedient participants
this suggests that obedient people may share many of the characteristics of people with an authoritarian personality
counterpoint
subscales of the F-sclae showed that obedient participants had characteristics that were unusual for authoritarianis
for exmaple they did not experience high levels of punishment in childhood
this suggests a complex link and means that authoritarianism is not a sueful predictor of obedience
limitation
: cant explain whole country's behaviour
millions of individuals in Germany displayed obedient and anti-semantic behaviour but cant all have had the same personality
it seems unlikely the majority of Germany's population had an authoritarian personality, a more likely explanation is that Germans identified with the Nazi state
therefore social identity theory may be a btetter explanation
limitation
: F-scale is politically biased
Christie and Jahoda (1954) suggest the F-scale aims to measure tendency towards extreme right wing ideology
but right wing and left wing both insist on complete obedience to political authority
therefore Adorno's theory is not a comprehensive dispositionional explanation as it doesnt explain obedience to left wing authoritarianism