Obedience: Dispositional Explanations

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What did Adorno investigate?
Causes of the obedient personality
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Who was involved in Adorno's research study?
2000 middle class white Americans
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What was Adorno testing in his research study?
Their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
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What is the scale Adorno developed to measure authoritarian personalities?
F-Scale
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What were the findings of Adorno's study?
Those who scored high on the F-Scale (people with authoritarian learnings) identified themselves with 'strong' people and were disparaging of 'weaker' people
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What else did Adorno find with authoritarian personalities?
No fuzziness between categories of people, fixed stereotypes of people, positive correlation between authoritarian personality and prejudice
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What is characteristic of an authoritarian personality?
Obedience to authority, Respect for those with authority, Contempt for those with inferior social status, Conventional attitudes towards love, sex, gender, race etc. and they often have an inflexible outlook
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Where does the authoritarian personality originate?
Forms in childhood as a result of harsh parenting- strict discipline, conditional love, severe criticism, impossibly high standards to meet
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What effect can a strict upbringing have on a child?
Cause resentment and hostility in the child, but they have to displace these emotions onto others not their parents because they feel subsequent punishment
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What reasearch was carried out to support the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience?
Milgram and Elms held interviews with a small group of obedient people who also scored high on the F-Scale
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What is the issue with Milgram's supporting study?
It simply shows a correlation between obedience and authoritarian personality, therefore a conclusion cant be drawn from it
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What is the third factor that may be involved with authoritarian personalities and obedience?
Lower level of education
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Why is Adorno's explanation limited?
It is difficult to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country's population, therefore seems unlikely that they could all possess an authoritarian personality
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What is the alternative explanation which explains obedience and seems more appropriate than Adorno's?
Social identity
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In what way is Adorno's explanation biased?
The F-scale is politically biased: it measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology therefore can't account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum
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What methodological problems are there with Adorno's explanation?
It is based on flawed methodology (F-Scale) as it is possible to get a high authoritarian personality by just ticking the same lien of boxes. People who agree with these are not necessarily authoritarian, merely 'aquiescers'
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What is the issue with the correlations in Adorno's study?
Correlation doesn't mean causation- he found significant correlations between prejudice and authoritarian personality but one doesn't cause the other
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Who was involved in Adorno's research study?

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2000 middle class white Americans

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What was Adorno testing in his research study?

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Card 4

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What is the scale Adorno developed to measure authoritarian personalities?

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What were the findings of Adorno's study?

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