Authoritarian Personality
- Obedience may due to personality rather than situational factors
- People with a high External Locus of Control are more likely to follow orders as they take less personal responsibility and are more affected by what others tell them
- People with a high Internal Locus of Control, are more likely to be self-directed and less like to follow orders from an authoritative figure if they do not agree with them
The authoritarian personality
- An authoritarian personality tends to show extreme respect for authority, status and hierarchies; despises those they consider to be 'weak'; has conventional attitudes towards gender, sexuality, race etc. is rigid in their beliefs; is justice-focused; is likely to have right-wing political views
- An authoritarian personality is likely to be the result of harsh parenting in which discipline was a key feature and expectation of 'perfect' behaviour is common i.e. the child is shown love as long as they behave exactly how the parent wants them to behave
Adorno et al.'s research
Procedure
- Adorno et al. (1950) developed a questionnaire called the F-Scale (fascist scale) to test whether someone had an authoritarian personality
- He studied more than 2000 middle-class, white Americans and their unconscious attitudes towards other racial groups
- Some examples from the F-Scale are:
- Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues for children to learn
- Homosexuals are hardly better than criminals and ought to be severely punished
Findings
- Those who scored high on the F-Scale identified with strong people, had contempt for the weak, admired high-status individuals and exhibited 'black and white' views
- There were strong positive correlation between authoritarianism and prejudice
Exam Tip
The authoritarian personality is a dispositional explanation of obedience which can be contrasted with situational explanations in AO3 exam responses. For example, you may be asked a longer question on situational explanations for obedience. By using the authoritarian explanation as a counterpoint to situational explanations you are demonstrating critical thinking i.e. using one theory as an alternative explanation for the behaviour (obedience),
Evaluation
Strengths
- Elms & Milgram interviewed a small sample of Milgram's original participants who had fully obeyed and found that when participants completed the F-Scale they scored significantly higher than those participants who had disobeyed
- There is real-world evidence for the authoritarian personality as seen in the behaviour of right-wing dictators such as Mussolini
Limitations
- Extreme left-wing personalities also show high levels of authoritarianism e.g. Stalin
- A self-report is open to social desirability and misuse: Greenstein (1969) stated that it was possible to get a high score just by putting 'agree' as your answers which would invalidate the F-scale
