Evaluating the dispositional explanation of obedience

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Evaluating the dispositional explanation of obedience

Advantages

  • Research support - Elms and Milgram interviewed some of Adorno’s original participants. Found that the 20 obedient participants had a much higher F-score than 20 disobedient participants. This supports Adorno’s view that obedient people show authoritarian personality.

Disadvantages

  • Countering supporting research - found that obedient participants had differing ideals than the usual authoritarian, such as a lack of glorification of their father and a lack of hostility towards their mothers. This shows that the obedient individuals with high scores were unlikely to be authoritarian, and that authoritarianism is unlikely to be a reliable method of measuring obedience.
  • Limited application - cannot explain obedience in a populations (most Germans in WW2 were extremely antiSemitic, racist and were obedient). It is unlikely everyone in Germany at the time was authoritarian, which limits this explanation.
  • Political bias - the F-scale only measures extreme right wing views, despite both sides of the political spectrum holding similar views on authority. Adorno’s explanation is thus not comprehensive to everyone on the political spectrum.
  • Response bias - it is possible to have a high F-score by selecting agree for every answer. This is not a suitable scale as anyone who has response bias will be wrongly marked as authoritarian.

Evaluation

The dispositional explanation of obedience, the authoritarian personality has many limitations. It is not a suitable way of measuring obedience. In addition, Adorno’s F-scale lacks temporal validity as this scale was created 70 years ago. 

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