RECAP - WHITEBOARDS Agentic State and Autonomous state.. Why do people obey so readily? Obedience research has led psychologists to suggest a number of explanations… Outline each one on your whiteboard Agentic State and Autonomous state.. Binding Factors… Legitimacy of the authority… Destructive authority…

Peer Assessment - Homework

Peer Assessment - Homework

Peer Assessment Question 5

Peer Assessment

Obedience: Dispositional Factors The authoritarian personality Objectives: To be able to describe dispositional explanations of obedience including the authoritarian personality

Question… Do people obey because of their personality, do you agree or disagree? What personality traits might someone have who is more likely to accept orders from an authority figure?

Dispositional explanation Key Term: Any explanation of behaviour that highlights the importance of an individual’s personality (their disposition). Such explanations are often contrasted with situational explanations.

A dispositional explanation A situational explanation of obedience focuses on the external circumstances rather than to the personalities of the people involved Social-psychological factors concern the influences of others on an individual’s behaviour, rather than external factors in the situation A dispositional explanation of behaviour highlights the importance of the individual’s personality

Personality? Adorno (1950) was interested in investigating why Nazi soldiers were so willing to persecute and kill members of minority groups, such as Jews during WW II; could it be blamed on a personality trait? He claimed a particular personality type is more likely to obey an authority A high level of obedience is basically a psychological disorder

The characteristics of an authoritarian personality Associated behaviour Rigid beliefs in conventional values Very traditional ideas – dislike of change and disorder General hostility towards other groups Has a dominating and bullying manner Intolerant of ambiguity – anything that cannot be defined in clear cut way Cannot tolerate behaviour that is ‘wrong’ in any way Submissive attitudes towards authority figures Respectful to authority figures

Procedure Adorno et al. (1950) investigated the causes of an obedient personality in a study of more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups. They developed an ‘F’ scale to measure the relationship between a person's personality type and prejudiced beliefs F = Fascist… …someone who believes in a totalitarian state rule by a supreme leader (dictator) who controls everything possible and treats people harshly

The ‘F’ scale

Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality Adorno developed a scale to test his theory Agree or disagree? 1 One of the most important things that children should learn is obedience 2 All children need strict discipline 3 All children need respect for authority 4 Some professionals in society such as doctors are much more important than others such as artists 5 If you have a problem, it is best not to think of it but concentrate on other things 6 If people chatted less and worked more, then society would be a better place 7 Jail is too soft for people who commit crimes like murder or rape – they should be tortured or hanged 8 Society could be improved if we got rid of less able people such as the less intelligent ones, homosexuals and the disabled 9 Homosexuality is a crime and should be treated as such 10 If you are not taught manners at an early age, then you can hardly expect to mix with decent people later on in life

Read each scale item carefully and decide whether a person with the authoritarian traits would be more likely to agree or disagree with it. Why do you think the scale was designed to include some statements a person would agree with and some they would disagree with? Can you think of any problems with using questionnaires like this one to measure people’s psychological traits?

Findings Those who had 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 High scorers had a particular cognitive style: there were no ‘grey areas’ between categories of people They had fixed and distinctive stereotypes about other groups There was a strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice

The authoritarian personality The identification of a particular personality type, the Authoritarian Personality, provided a possible explanation for why some people require very little pressure in order to obey Authoritarian Personality: a distinct personality pattern characterised by strict adherence to conventional values and a belief in absolute obedience or submission to authority

Development of the authoritarian personality A very disciplined upbringing Parents (particularly the father) are harsh and show little affection and issue severe punishments   Unconscious hostility They consciously have very high opinions of their parents but unconsciously feel very aggressive towards them    Displacement This hostility is displaced (moved on to) onto safer targets, namely those who are weaker and so are unable to hurt them Prejudice This results in prejudice views and discriminatory behaviour

RECAP Outline the authoritarian personality Outline the procedure of Adorno’s experiment What did Adorno find? What is the F-scale and what does it tell us? +/- of dispositional explanations

Evaluations Research support Milgram and his assistant Alan Elms (1966) conducted a follow-up study using pps who had taken part in Milgram’s original study They found that those who were fully obedient and went all the way to 450 volts scored higher on tests of authoritarianism and lower on scales of social responsibility than those who defied the experimenter These findings support Adorno’s claims although only a correlation could be determined There is a large body of evidence to indicate that people who are very rigid, conservative, and prejudiced have been brought up in the way that Adorno described, with a great deal of corporal punishment and little chance to express their own opinions

Evaluations Limited explanation Any explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find it hard it hard to explain obedient behaviour in the majority of a country’s population ↓ In pre-war Germany, millions of individuals all displayed obedient, racist and anti-Semitic behaviour – they cannot all have had the same personality! Therefore…

Evaluations Methodological problems The interviews were vulnerable to interviewer bias. As the interviewers knew the hypothesis of the study, they were aware of what information they needed to confirm it. Knowing the participants' test scores as well meant that they knew in advance whether the interviewee was likely to have an authoritarian personality. Therefore their questioning would have been guided by this knowledge. They may even have recorded only the information they needed to confirm their hypothesis.

Evaluation Sample: all white middle-class Americans, so can the results be generalised? Does not explain why people are prejudiced towards some groups and not others Not all prejudiced people had a harsh upbringing (and vice versa) The attitude ‘statements’ in the scale are very limited (e.g. closed questions) Adorno only found that there was a relationship (correlation) between personality type and prejudice – this cannot show cause and effect

Test your understanding Explain the term dispositional explanation in relation to explanations of obedience (2) In the context of explanations of obedience, explain what is meant by the authoritarian personality (2) Discuss the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience (12)