Obedience: dispositional explanations

The authoritarian personality
Theodor Adorno wanted to understand the anti-Semitism of the Holocaust; on the basis of his research he came to believe that a high level of obedience was basically a personality disorder and tried to locate the causes of it in the personality of the individual

Procedure
Adorno et al (1950) investigated the causes of obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed several scales including the F-scale (potential for fascism scale) which is still used to measure authoritarian personality today

Findings
People with authoritarian leanings (scored high on the F-scale) identified with 'strong' people and were generally contemptuous of the…