Explanations of Obedience - Authoritarian Personality

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  • Created by: rosannaaa
  • Created on: 05-05-18 09:32
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  • Authoritarian Personality - type of personality Adorno argued was susceptible to obeying people in authority.
  • Submissive to those of higher status and dismissive of inferiors and susceptible to obedience.
  • Adorno et al investigated causes of obedient personality in study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups.
  • They developed F-Scale to measure this.
  • F-Scale ‘Fascist’ scale questionnaire  by Adorno,  has 30 questions accessing 9 personality dimensions.
  • Agreeing to such terms indicated an Authoritarian Personality, rigid thinkers who obeyed authority and enforced strict adherence to social rules and hierarchies.
  • FINDINGS - people with authoritarian learnings identified with strong people and contemptous of the weak. Conscious of their own and others' status, showing excessive respect to those of higher status.
    • Explanations of Obedience: Dispositional Exp: Authoritarian Personality
      • This is a psycho dynamic explanation.
  • Also found authoritarian people had fixed stereotypes about other groups. Strong positive correlation between prejudice and authoritarian.
  • Authoritarian Characteristic - especially obedient to authority, contempt for people they see as having inferior social status. Inflexibile in their outlook.
  • Origin of authoritarian personality - forms in childhood, as a result of harsh parenting. Strict discipline, impossibly high standards, severe criticism of failure, conditional love.
  • This creates resentment in the child, but cannot express these feelings to parents due to fear of reprisal.
  • Therefore, these fears are displaced onto others seen as weaker, also called scapegoating.

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