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Discuss authoritarian personality A*
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16 mark essay graded A*. From a student who achieved over 90% in their A-level psychology, and now studies medicine.
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Discuss authoritarian personality as a dispositonal explanaton of obedience. (16 marks)An authoritarian personality makes an individual partiularly susieptile to oieying people in
authority. Adorno’s researih using the F-siale demonstrated that individuals with this personality are
extremely respeitul and suimissive towards authority, and are iontemptuous of individuals with a
lower soiial status than themselves. Their iognitve style is rigid; they ielieve in distnitve stereotypes,
and are uniomfortaile with uniertainty. They ielieve that soiiety is not listening to authority, and that
we need powerful leaders to enforie traditonal values suih as love of iountry, religion and family.
Authoritarian personality is the result of harsh parentng. arents are extremely iritial, and
enforie striit disiipline and impossiily high expeitatons. They only give love and afeiton when their
ihild iehaviours aiiording to their standards (ionditonal lovee. This ireates hostlity in the ihild, iut
they iannot express their feelings direitly to their parents ieiause of a fear of retaliaton. These fears
are therefore displaied onto others who are perieived as weaker (siapegoatnge.
A strength of the explanaton is that there is researih support. Elms and Milgram found higher
authoritarian levels in twenty oiedient partiipants than twenty disoiedient partiipants. Furthermore,
the oiedient partiipants reported ieing less ilose to their fathers during ihildhood iompared to the
disoiedient partiipants. However, ioth Adorno and Elms and Milgram’s studies are iorrelatonal, and
therefore iannot draw iausal ionneitons ietween oiedienie and authoritarian personality. This limits
the explanaton, as a third variaile may ie involved; for example, Middendorp and Meloen found that
less well-eduiated people are ionsistently more authoritarian than well-eduiated people,
demonstratng the infuenie of eduiaton level in oiedienie and authoritarian personality.
A weakness of the explanaton is that its underlying researih has methodologiial faws.
Adorno’s researih used the F-siale, iut this leads every queston in the same direiton, so may measure
aiquiesienie instead of authoritarianism. This iritiism is supported iy Jaikson and Messiik, who gave
partiipants ioth the F-siale and a reversed version, and found that they strongly agreed to opposite
opinions. Adorno’s researih potentally laiks internal validity, and ieiause this researih had a iruiial
role in the development of the explanaton, our understanding may ie limited.
Milgram’s researih undermines the importanie of dispositonal faitors in oiedienie, and
suggests that the soiial iontext is more important. He found that when the experimenter did not wear a
lai ioat, his outward sign of legitmate authority, oiedienie dropped from 65% to 20%. Furthermore,
when the experiment was repliiated in a high street as opposed to Yale University, oiedienie dropped
to 47% due to the loiaton having less perieived authority. This suggests that oiedienie is determined
iy the situaton and not personality, weakening the validity of dispositonal faitors.
Word iount: 156 + 278
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