personality

• what is personality?

  combination of stable characteristics that form an individuals character and underline the way someone behaves overtime and in different situations
• different types of personality? (done by Eysenck)


  • psychoticism: lack empathy, aggressive and cold to others.
  • neuroticism: emotional instability linking to anxiety or fear.
  • stability: emotionally calm and unreactive.
  • extraversion: outgoing and social behaviour, wanting excitement and easily bored.
  • introversion: reserved and prefers solitary to social activities.
• arousal theory? (1990)

  individuals are motivated to act in ways that maintain an optimum level of physiological arousal. we engage in activities to maintain the balance.
• personality influenced by ARAS?

  introvert-extrovert dimension. stimulates cerebral cortex leading to higher cortical arousal. introverts are more cortically aroused, increasing levels of activity so introverts require lower levels of external stimulation hence why they're less outgoing
• personality influenced by ANS? (autonomic nervous system)


  stable-neurotic dimension. influences sympathetic nervous system. neurotic personalities show rapid and strong response to stressful situations linking to arousal in limbic system.
• Eysenck (1977)?

  A: link certain crimes to personality traits.

  P: 156 prisoners 18-38. divided to 5 groups: violent/ property/ confidence crimes, inadequate, residuals (didn't fit any category). all tested on EPI and variety of physiological measures including ECG and skin conductance.

  R/C: P= con men had lower scores. E= violent/property had low scores, inadequate/property has high scores. N= violent/residual had high scores, inadequate/property had low scores. physiological differences also found, certain personality traits can be linked to criminal behaviour
• Boduszek (2013)?

  • looked at 133 violent, 179 non-violent male prisoners. criminal thinking style is correlated with high levels of psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism so Eysencks theory has high validity.
• Farrington (1982)?

  • found very little evidence that EPI was an adequate measure for predicting offending in juveniles or adults, suggesting ideas of personality lack validity
• applications of Eysenck?

  criminals arise from inability to learn from ones mistakes which can be identified in early childhood. if intervention is early enough then it's possible to modify socialisation experiences
• evidence for explaining gender differences in crime?

  Lynn and Martin (1997), assessed PEN in 37 countries.

  • women scored higher on neuroticism in all countries
  • men had higher psychoticism in 34 countries
  • men had higher extraversion in 30 countries.

  gender differences can be seen, and suggests why men carry out more criminal acts.