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Discuss the authoritarian personality as an explanation for obedience 16 mark essay (Psychology - AQA )
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Discuss the authoritarian personality as an explanaton for obedience [16]The idea of authoritarian personality is a dispositonal eeplanatonn an eeplanaton that highlights the
importance of personality in obeying. Authoritarian personality is a type of personality that makes a
person more susceptble to obeying and respectng authority and dismissive of inferiors.
Adorno (1950) investgated obedient personality. He administered the F-scale (fascism scale) to 2000
middle classn white Americans. The scale is a measure of authoritarian personality in which an
individual has to agree/disagree with a series of statements looking at their views on ethnic/religious
minoritesn politcsn economics and morals. Adorno found that people with an authoritarian leaning/
high F-scale scores identfy with strong people/people with higher statusn showing respect and
servility to them and are disrespectul of the weak. Suggestng those with the personality type to be
more likely to obey because of their respect for those superior to them.
A limitaton of the eeplanaton can be found in the methodology of Adorno’s research into obedient
personalites. One methodological law is that the F-scale can be critcised as being open to
acquiescence biasn in which individuals merely agree with all the questons. This questons the
reliability of the fndings as it may have merely been someone acquiescing and not answering the
level of agreement to statements truthfully. Furthermoren social desirability bias may occur because
the partcipant wanted to provide socially acceptable answersn answers they believed were socially
‘correct’ and made them ft in with people around them. Another law is that his sample is limited;
he used all white Americans from middle class backgrounds. This means that his sample was
unrepresentatve of the wider populaton and thereforen the results lack eeternal validity as they
cannot be generalised to other people all over the world and of diferent social class’s. Thereforen
the lawed methodology makes any supportng evidence insufcient as it makes then lack validity in
that the results may have come from cofounding variables (factors afectng the research situaton.
Authoritarian characteristcs include an individual being eetremely respectul and obedient towards
people of authority and are dismissive of those inferior to them seeing them as weak. They have a
strong need for a leader to enforce traditonal laws and have conventonal aatudes towards seen
race and gender and are thereforen more likely to be racist and seeist. Individuals are about black
and white thinking as they cannot deal with uncertainty and being leeible.
The authoritarian personality is formed in childhood as a result of harsh/strict parentng in which
high standards are placed on them and they are critcised for failing. Conditons of worth are placed
on them meaning that as childrenn they do not receive unconditonal love from their parentsn but
instead are provided with love if they meet their parent’s standards – for eeample geang an A.
Scapegoatng occurs as a result of all of the behaviours the parents display to themn this results in
the individual displacing feelings onto people they perceive as weaker than them. This eeplanaton is
therefore a psychodynamic eeplanaton as to why people dislike those considered socially inferior
and obey those who are superior as it refers to how childhood eeperiences result in adult
behaviours.
A strength of the authoritarian personality of obedience is that there is supportng evidence. This
comes from Milgram and Elms who interviewed a sample of 20 fully obedient partcipants (who
obeyed to 450V in Milgram’s original 1963 shock study). Findings that they had scored high on the F-
scale questonnaire. They believed there was a possible link between obedience and authoritarian
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