Dispositional explanations for obedience: the authoritarian personality

Like Milgram, Adorno et al wanted to understand the anti-semitism of the holocaust. However, their research led to very different conclusions than Milgram had - on the basis of their research they determined that high obediece levels were indicators of a psychological disorder, and tried to find the cause of it in the personality of the individual.

Procedure:

1950 - investigate the obedient personality of more than 2000 middle class white Americans and thier unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. several scales were developed to test it, including the potential for fascism (f-scale) used today to measure authoritarian personality.

F-scale uses comments such as "Obedience and respect for authoirty are the most important virtues children should learn" and use the response of the extent to a subject`s agreement to determine whether a person has an authoritarian personality.

Findings:

people who scored highly for the authoritarian personality on the F-scale and other scales identified with "strong" people and were generally contemptuous of the "weak". They were highly aware of status and showed excessive deference and servility to those of a higher status. Adorno et al also found that authoritarian people had a cognitive style where there was no fuzziness between two categories, with fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups. there was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice.

Authoritarian characteristics:
Adorno concluded people with an authoritarian personality have a tendency to be especially obedient to authority. they have an extreme respect and submissiveness to authority as well as a contempt for those they see as inferior. they have…