1. Obedience: Dispositional explanations
Pages of course text
Social influence:
Dispositional explanation for obedience: the authoritarian personality

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. Complete the ‘F scale’ sheet

6. Adorno’s Authoritarian Personality
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

9. 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

10. 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

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. Origin of the authoritarian personality
Harsh upbringing;
little love,
much
punishment
Fear of
parents
Excessively respectful of authority figures
Hatred of
parents
Hate and anger displaced onto others
Based on Sigmund Freud’s idea that the adult personality is determined by childhood experiences

13. 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

14. Complete picture that

15. Evaluations Limited explanation
Any explanation of obedience in terms of individual personality will find 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!

16. An alternative explanation?
Social Identity Theory
People identify themselves as belonging to particular social groups
We favour our own group (in group) over any group to which we do not belong (out group).
We maximise the similarities within the group and the differences between our group and others. e.g. provide rules/norms for that group
The majority of the German people identified with the anti-Semantic Nazi state, and scapegoated the ‘outgroup’, the Jews

17. Evaluations Political bias
The ‘F’ scale measures the tendency towards an extreme right-wing ideology.
However, in reality left-wing authoritarianism (e.g. Russian Bolshevism or Chinese Maoism) also emphasises the importance of complete obedience to legitimate political authority
Therefore, Adorno’s theory is limited as it cannot account for obedience to authority across the whole political spectrum

18. 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.

19. Evaluation
Sample: all male and the research was done in America, 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

20. Task
Apply on page 28- Workplace bully

21. Workplace bully

23. Could you answer the following question?
Describe and evaluate the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience.
(12 marks – AS/16 marks A level)