Key Study : Elms and Milgram - The Authoritarian Personality

Key Study : Elms and Milgram

One of the major debates surrounding Milgram's study of obedience was whether participants' behaviour emerged only under specific situational conditions or whether it was dispositional, i.e. the result of a particular personality pattern. Research on obedience measures actual submission to authority, not just what a person says they are likely to do, and therefore allows researchers to study whether participants high in authoritarianism are more likely to obey an authority figure.

Procedure

Elms and Milgram carried out a follow-up study using participants who had previously taken part in one of Milgram's experiments two months before. They selected 20 'obedient' participants and 20 'defiant' participants. Each participant completed the MMPI…