Eyesnck's theory

• Theory of criminal personality

  Proposed that behaviour was in 3 dimensions.

  • Introversion-extraversion
  • neuroticism-stability
  • psychoticism-sociability

  Criminal personality is neurotic-extravert-psychotic.
• Extraverts

  Underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours.

  Don't condition easily, don't learn from mistakes.
• Neurotic

  High level of reactivity in sympathetic nervous system

  Respond quickly to situations of threat so they tend to be nervous, jumpy and overanxious.

  Behaviour is difficult to predict
• Psychotic

  Higher levels of testosterone

  Unemotional and prone to aggression
• Role of socialisation

  Personality is linked to offending behaviour via socialisation processes such as children being taught to be patient and socially oriented.

  High extravert and neurotic meant they had nervous systems difficult to condition therefore, they had impulsive behaviours.
• Strength - research support

  Eysenck + Eysenck

  Compare 2070 prisoner's scores on the Eysenck Personality questionnaire to 2422 controls.

  Prisoners recorded higher average scores on extravert, neurotic and psychotic.

  Agrees with predictions of the theory
• Counterpoint - research support

  Farrington et al

  Meta-analysis of relevant studies

  Offenders had high score on psychoticism but not extraversion and neuroticism.

  Challenges the criminal personality
• Limitation - Too simplistic

  Can't explain offending behaviour on personality traits alone.

  Poor predictor of how long offending would go on for.

  Moffitt considered persistence in offending being a reciprocal process between personality traits and reactions to these traits.

  More complex than Eysenck suggested.
• Limitation - cultural factors

  Cultural factors not taken into account.

  Barton + Holanchock

  Studied Hispanic + African-American offenders in a prison in New York.

  All groups were less extraverted than a control group.

  Could've been because of the sample.

  Questions generalisabiltiy