DISPOSITIONAL EXPLANATION:
Adorno proposed that instead of situational factors causing obedience, it might be due to a dispositional cause.
To investigate this, his research was inspired by the anti- Semitic behaviours of the Germans, and he studied
unconscious attitudes towards racism in 2000 white men. He created an ‘F’ scale to measure how
‘authoritarian’ one’s personality was. He found a strong correlation between having an Authoritarian
Personality and high levels of prejudice. Some characteristics of the authoritarian Personality include: extreme
respect towards authority figures, conventional attitudes towards race, sex and gender and rigid thinking.
Adorno believed that developing the Authoritarian Personality was due to a harsh upbringing as a child, where
parents’ strict rules would create feelings of hostility in the child, but they would displace them not on their
parents, but on a weaker ‘minority’ group, who they believed were inferior to them- this is viewed as a
psychodynamic explanation.
A strength of the Authoritarian Personality is that there is research supporting the link between having this
personality type and high levels of obedience. Elms and Milgram got 20 ‘obedient’ and ‘defiant’ participants
from his original shock study and made them complete the ‘F Scale’ and a personality test. They found a
correlation between the ‘obedient’ participants and having an Authoritarian Personality. The ‘obedient’
participants also found the experimenter in Milgram’s study an extremely admirable figure. However,
correlation does not equal cause, and there may be another factor causing high levels of obedience, such as
education (Middendorp). Therefore, Elms and Milgram’s research shows that obedience can be explained
through a dispositional explanation, increasing its validity.
However, a limitation of the Authoritarian Personality is that the ‘F Scale’ measuring this personality type has
methodological issues. For example, Adorno formulated his questions in a way that a person could get an
Authoritarian Personality type by merely ‘strongly agreeing’ with every answer- they were called ‘acquesiers’.
Additionally, when Adorno conducted interviews with the participants, he already knew who had Authoritarian
personalities as well as knowing their family background. Therefore this weakens the validity of this
dispositional explanation as there is an element of researcher bias involved.
On the other hand, another strength is that Altemeyer found a correlation between left-wing views and lower
levels of obedience. His research into obedience stated that right-wing authoritarians had high levels of
obedience and conventional views. Begue devised a replication of Milgram’s obedience study, using a fake
game show where participants would shock their fellow partners. He found that participants who classified
themselves as being more left-wing on the political spectrum actually gave lower shocks to their fellow partner,
showing they are able to resist obedience more than right wing authoritarians. Therefore, this suggests that the
situational context does not exclude individual differences as a determining influence of obedience.
A limitation is that the Authoritarian Personality does have a limited explanation, as it cannot explain obedience
for a whole population. For example, in pre-war Germany, many people were said to have been highly
obedient and held anti-Semitic views. However, despite being obedient, all these Germans possessed different
personalities, and could not have all displayed Authoritarian Personality types. This is a weakness as it
suggests that instead of a dispositional explanation allowing us to understand obedience, it might be that the
social identity theory causes obedience. In Nazi Germany, perhaps the Germans identified with the group
they were part of, and discriminated against the outgroup, the Jews- this process is known as scapegoating.
, RESISTANCE TO SOCIAL INFLUENCE:
There are two main ways in which people can resist social influence, including situational and dispositional
explanations. The first is social support- a situational explanation. This is the presence of people that can
resist conforming or obeying, and in doing so, they act as models for others to also resist social influence.
Social support within conformity is demonstrated in one of Asch’s variations to do with unanimity. In the
presence of one dissenter, the conformity rate dropped from 33% to 5.5%, showing that breaking the
unanimity is the most important factor in resisting social influence within conformity. Social support comes into
play in obedience, too. In one of Milgram’s variations, when the genuine participant had two disobedient
confederates who refused to shock to the highest level, obedience dropped from 65% to 10%, showing that the
presence of disobedient peers encouraged individuals to do the same and act independently.
A dispositional explanation for resisting social influence is locus of control, which is the sense about what
people feel directs their lives. Rotter says there are two types of locus of control- people either have a high
internal or external LoC. People with an internal LoC feel a personal responsibility for their actions, act more
independent and rely less on others. Whereas, people with a high external LoC believe their actions are
controlled by fate and other factors out of their control, so rely more on others and tend to conform more too.
Therefore Rotter argues that people with a high internal LoC can resist social influence more because they
feel responsible for their actions and are also more independent and self-driven.
A strength is that there is research support for social support helping to reduce conformity. Allen and Levine
conducted a replication of Asch’s line experiment with three conditions; condition one had a dissenter with
normal vision, condition two had a dissenter with poor vision (demonstrated by the thick-rimmed glasses he
wore), and condition three was a control group, with no dissenter. They found that conformity rates dropped
significantly in conditions one and two, even with an unreliable dissenter. This is a strength as it supports the
idea of social support helping to resist social influence, as it shows people acting freely from their own
conscience, as opposed to conforming to the majority.
However, a weakness of locus of control is that it plays a limited role in resisting social influence. Rotter argues
that it is only relevant in novel situations, not in familiar situations, where prior knowledge and experience is
more important to influence our behaviour. Therefore, people will still conform or obey in certain situations
even if they have a high internal locus of control. This is a weakness because this concept weakens the validity
of locus of control in explaining resistance to social influence, as it is only used in some situations.
Another strength is that there is research support for obedience in resisting social influence. Holland gathered
participants and separated them into two groups of who had an internal or external locus of control. He then
replicated Milgram’s original obedience study, recording the percentage of each group who would shock the
learner to the highest shock level. He found that 37% of internals resisted shocking to the highest level versus
25% on externals who resisted obeying the experimenter. However, locus of control is unable to explain why
63% of internals did not resist social influence. But the general correlation between having a high internal locus
of control and resisting social influence is apparent in this situation, supporting Rotter’s concept.
Yet, Twenge et al conducted a longitudinal study that contradicted Holland’s research showing the link
between having a high internal locus of control and being more likely to resist social influence. He studied
young Americans for 40 years tracking their obedience levels. He found that over time, more young people
became more resistant to social influence whilst also having an external locus of control. Therefore, although
this research reduces the validity of locus of control, it proposes an important point that in our changing
society, more young people are becoming interested in fate and luck, therefore leading to having an external
locus of control, showing that Rotter’s original explanations lack historical validity.
