Zusammenfassung der Ressource
obedience: dispositional explanations
- authoritarian personality
- Adorno wanted to understand the Holocaust
- high levels of obedience was because of a psychological disorder
- procedure
- Adorno
- obedient personality study
- 2000 middle class white Americans
- looked at their unconscious attitudes towards racial groups
- the potential for fascism scale
- f scale
- measures authoritarian personality
- findings
- high score = condescending of the weak,
conscious of others status
- they also had fixed stereotypes for people
- there was a strong correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
- authoritarian characteristics
- authoritarian personality are more obedient to authority
- submissive to authority
- prejudice to those of lower social status
- prejudice about sex race and gender
- need strong authority to enforce traditional values
- origin of authoritarian personality
- formed in childhood from harsh parenting
- this creates resentment in the child but the child can't take it out on the parents
- so takes it out on the inferior as they see the parents do - scapegoating
- this is a psychodynamic explanation
- evaluation
- research support
- Milgram
- interviewed people with a high score on the f scale
- he thought there was a link between obedience and authoritarian personality
- just a correlation between 2 measurable variables
- don't know cause and effect - may be a third factor involved
- limited explanation
- millions of Germans showed high
obedience and were racist
- they couldn't all have had the same personality
- social identity explains obedience
- Germans identified with Nazis and scapegoated the Jews
- political bias
- f scale measures an extreme form of right wing ideology
- Christie & Jahoda
- it is a politically biased interpretation of authoritarian personality
- it shows importance of complete obedience of legitimate political authority
- evaluation +
- methodological problems
- the f scale is based on flawed methodology
- Greenstein
- every question is worded in the same direction
- if you ticked all down one row you would get a high score
- may be measuring the tendency to agree with everything
- researcher bias
- Ardono interviewed the
people and knew their scores
and he knew the hypothesis
- correlation not causation
- high authoritarian was linked to prejudice against minority
- however does not show cause and effect
- so harsh parenting styles may not have cause authoritarian personality