Eysenck’s theory

• One strength of Eysenck's theory is there is evidence to support the criminal personality. 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. This agrees with the predictions of the theory that offenders rate higher than average across the three dimensions that Eysenck identified.
• 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. There is also inconsistent evidence of differences on EEG measures between extraverts and introverts which casts doubt on the physiological basis of Eysenck's theory. This means some of the central assumptions of the criminal personality have been challenged.
• 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, in the sense of whether someone is likely to become a 'career offender'. She considered persistence in offending behaviour to be the result of a reciprocal process between individual personality traits on the one hand, and environmental reactions to those traits on the other. This presents a more complex picture than Eysenck suggested.
• A limitation 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. They also tend not to condition easily and therefore do not learn from their mistakes.
• 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, and their general instability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict.
• Psychotic= suggested to have higher levels of testosterone and are unemotional and prone to aggression.
• The criminal personality type is neurotic-extrovert-psychotic. Neurotics are unstable and therefore prone to overreact to situations of threat. Extraverts seek more arousal and thus engage in dangerous activities. Psychotics are aggressive and lack empathy.
• In Eysenck’s theory, personality is linked to offending behaviour via socialisation processes. Eysenck saw offending behaviour as developmentally immature in that it is selfish and concerned with immediate gratification - offenders are impatient and cannot wait for things.
• According to Eysenck, our personality traits are biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit. Thus, all personality types (including the criminal personality type) have an innate, biological basis.
• The process of socialisation is one in which children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and more socially orientated. Eysenck believed that people with high E and N scores had nervous systems that made them difficult to condition. As a result, they are less likely to learn anxiety responses to antisocial impulses and, consequently, they would be more likely to act antisocially in situations where the opportunity presented itself.
• Eysenck developed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), a form of psychological test which locates respondents along the E, N and P dimensions to determine their personality type.