1. 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…

2. Peer Assessment - Homework

3. Peer Assessment - Homework

4. Peer Assessment Question 5

5. Peer Assessment

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

7. 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?

8. 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.

9. 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

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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

13. The ‘F’ scale

14. 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

15. 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?

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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…

25. 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.

26. 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

27. 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)