Eysenck’s theory

• Eysenck and Eysenck compared 2070 prisoners’ scores on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire with 2422 controls. On measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism - prisoners recorded higher average scores than controls.
• However, Farrington et al. conducted a meta-analysis and reported that offenders tended to score high on measures of psychoticism, but not for extraversion and neuroticism.
• One limitation is the idea that all offending behaviour can be explained by personality traits alone.
• Moffitt drew a distinction between offending behaviour that only occurs in adolescence and that which continues into adulthood. She argued that personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for.
• One limitation of Eysenck’s theory is that cultural factors are not taken into account.
• Bartol and Holanchock studied Hispanic and African-American offenders in a maximum security prison in New York. The researchers divided these offenders into six groups based on their offending history and the nature of their offences. All six groups were less extravert than a non-offender control group whereas Eysenck would have expected them to be more extravert.
• Bartol and Holanchock suggested this was because the sample was a very different cultural group from that investigated by Eysenck. This questions how far the criminal personality can be generalised and suggests it may be a culturally relative concept.
• Eysenck proposed that behaviour could be represented along two dimensions: introversion-extraversion (E) and neuroticism-stability (N). He later added a third dimension, psychoticism-sociability (P).
• Extraverts= have an underactive nervous system- constantly seek out excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage risk-taking behaviours.
• Neurotic= have a high level of reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system- they respond quickly to situations of threat and tend to be nervous, jumpy and overanxious.
• Psychotic= suggested to have higher levels of testosterone and are unemotional and prone to aggression.
• The criminal personality type is neurotic-extrovert-psychotic.
• In Eysenck’s theory, personality is linked to offending behaviour via socialisation processes.