Obedience - Dispositional Explanations

Adorno - Authoritarian Personality: Adorno et al wanted to investigate the causes of the obedient personality Adorno studied 2000 middle class white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups To do this he devised a questionnaire asking people how much they agreed with particular statements. For example 'obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn' Adorno used the F-scale to investigate this, which measures the tendency towards fascism People with authoritarian learnings and who scored highly on the F-scale identified with 'strong' people and were generally contemptuous of the 'weak'. They were very conscious of their own and others' status showing excessive respect, deference and servility to those of a higher status Authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between categories of people with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice Milgram and Elms conducted interviews with fully obedient participants. who scored highly on the F-scale, believing there may be a link between obedience and authoritarianism. However this is only a correlation between two measured variables making it impossible to draw the conclusion that authoritarian personality causes obedience. It is possible there are other factors involved for example obedience and authoritarianism may be linked with level of education It is more likely that social identity explains obedience. Authoritarian personality cannot explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country's population. For example in pre-war Germany, millions of people displayed obedient, racist and anti-semitic behaviour despite having different personalities. It is unlikely they all had an authoritarian personality. However they did identify with the anit-semitic Nazi state. showing social identity can explain obedience better than authoritarianism The F-scale measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology. However Christie and Jahoda pointed out this was politically biased, as left-wing and right-wing ideologies have a lot in common, including the importance of complete obedience to legitimate political authority. This is a limitation because it is not a comprehensive dispositional explanation that can account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum The F-scale is based on a flawed methodology. Its items are worded in the same direction making it possible to get a high score by ticking the same line of boxes down the page. There may also have been acquiescence bias which is the tendency to agree with everything, regardless of the content Adorno found many correlations however it doesn't matter how strong a correlation is, correlation does not equal causation

Authoritarian Characteristics:Adorno concluded that people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority. They have an extreme respect for authority and submissiveness to it. They also show contempt (feeling that a person/thing is worthless/beneath consideration) for people they believe to be inferior, and have highly conventional attitudes towards sex, race and gender. They view society as going to the dogs and therefore believe we need strong and powerful leaders to enforce traditional values such as love of country, religion and family. People with an authoritarian personality are inflexible in their outlook - for them there are no grey areas. Everything is either right or wrong and they are very uncomfortable with uncertainty.

Origin of authoritarian personality:Adorno et al also wanted to identify the origin of authoritarian personality. They concluded that it formed in childhood as a result of harsh parenting. Typically the parenting style identified by Adorno features extremely strict discipline, an expectation of absolute loyalty, impossibly high standards and severe criticism of perceived failings. It is also characterised by conditional love - that is, the parents love and affection for the child depends entirely on how he/she behaves. Adorno argued that these experiences create resentment and hostility in the child, but the child cannot express these feelings directly against their parents because of a well-rounded fear of reprisals. So the fears are displaced onto others who are perceived to be weaker. This is called scape-goating. This explains a central trait of obedience to higher authority which is a dislike for people considered to be socially inferior or who belong to other social groups. This is a psychodynamic explanation