Evaluation of the authoritarian personality. by

Real World Evidence

2024-03-08 11:15:29 UTC

P: One strength of Elms and Milgram's research is that it is has real world evidence.

E: For example, there is real world evidence for authoritarian personality as seen in the behaviour of right wing dictatorship such as Mussolini.

S: This therefore means that the findings from Elms and Milgram's research can be used when it comes to real life situations.

H: However, one limitation of Elms and Milgrams research is that the F-scale only measures the tendency towards an extreme form of right-wing ideology. This is when Christie and Jahoda (1954) argued that the F-scale is a politically-biased interpretation of Authoritarian Personality.

Yellow Hat-strenghts of theory

2024-03-08 11:16:31 UTC

P:One strength of Adorno's study is it easy replicable procesure.

E:For example to test authority in different cultures using his procedure.Psychologist used closed questionnaire result of which determine person's level of authority. Set of questions were the same and answers was put in order(very disagree-strongly agree)making results more valid.

S:Therefore Adorno's procedure can be easily used to test authority in different cultures because it had clearly defined procedure and general question.

H:However original Adorno's procedure considered as outdated and quite controversial and should be changed to be applicable today e.g. qestions about supremacy of politians and your opinion about it.

Weaknesses of The Authoritarian Personality (research support counterpoint)

2024-03-08 11:21:17 UTC

P - After analysing individual subscales it was found that the obedient ppts. had a number of characteristics that were unusual for authoritarians.

E - For example unlike authoritarians, Milgrams obedient ppts. generally did not glorify their fathers, did not experience unusual levels of punishment in childhood and did not have particularly hostile attitudes towards their mothers.

S - This means that the link between obedience and authoritarianism is complex. The obedient ppts. we're unlike authoritarians in so many ways that authoritarianism is unlikely to be a useful predictor of obedience

green hat-practical application

2024-03-08 11:27:05 UTC

one strength of the authoritarian personality is practical application. For example, real world behaviour like Nazi Germany can be related to the authoritarian personality and a situation similar could be avoided in the future now that we know part of the cause for their obedience. Middendorp and Meleon found that less educated people are more likely to display authoritarian personality characteristics. Therefore, education and other social situations could be adjusted to form the desired personality type. However, it is possible that in Elm and Milgrams study there was repsonse bias or social desirability, which could lead to them being incorrectly classified as authoritarian. Skewing the data.

Other explanations

2024-03-08 11:28:03 UTC

A weakness is situational factors. This tells us that the environment and other factors affect the outcome of the experiment. These include the agentic state which milgram found others act as an agent to people in authority and legitimacy of authority which is where the social status makes other act differently. This therefore tells us it is not just dispositional factors that effect authoritarian personality but the situation they are in

However people cannot just blame situational factors as when milgram and elms redid the study after using the f scale they found results that correspond with the hypothesis

Effectiveness of theory compared to AS and LoA theory

2024-03-08 11:28:21 UTC

The Agency Theory focuses mainly on situational factors influencingg
obedience and can be contrasted with theories focusing on individual factors, like the Authoritarian Personality Theory, which predicts that some people are more likely to obey due to their characteristics.
People with authoritarian 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 unlike legitimacy of authority which explains people being obediand due to social influcess and they also can disobedience in the study by rank and Jacobson