Discuss the Authoritarian Personality as an explanation for obedience (16 marks)

The authoritarian personality refers to a specific personality held by people which makes them more prone to obedience. It can be measured through a system, devised by Adorno et al (1950), called the California F Scale, which presents the reader with statements to which they either agree or disagree, which in turn measures how authoritarian they are. The personality is thought to be caused by a strict upbringing, as hostility cannot be expressed towards the individual’s parents, and so is expressed towards other during adulthood. People with an authoritarian personality tend to be rigid thinkers, who are obedient to authority in most cases. They have a strict adherence to social values, and show hostility to inferiors, but servility to superiors. Altemeyer further specified the features of what he called ‘right wing authoritarianism’ and grouped to aforementioned features into three categories: conventionalism, authoritarian aggression, and authoritarian submission. People with such a personality are more obedient because they see authority figures more legitimately than people without, and feel like they must obey to maintain their position and uphold societal values.

A strength of this explanation is that it has research support. Elms and Milgram (1966) did a follow-up on participants from Milgram’s original study, featuring 20 ‘obedient’ and 20 ‘defiant’ participants. They found that, after participants completed the MMPI scale, the California F Scale, gave answers to open questions about childhood and attitudes towards the experimenter in the original study, that the ‘obedient’ people were significantly more authoritarian, were less close with their father, and were more admirable of the researcher than ‘defiant’ participants were. This is significant, as it supports the idea that people with an authoritarian personality are more obedient than those without, increasing the validity of the explanation.