Obedience (dispositional explanation)

the authoritarian personality

high obedience is pathological: Adorno et al (1950)

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

that unquestioning obedience is a psychological disorder, and tried to find its cause in the individual's personality

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

findings

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

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