Obedience - Dispositional Explanations

Adorno [1950] (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, defence and servity to those of 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 & Elms [1966] 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 is a third factor 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. However they did identify with the anti-semitic Nazi state showing social identity can explain obedience better than authoritarianism
• The 'F-scale'…