Eysenck's explanation

• Psychosocial explanations:

  Eyesenck's theory- 

  • Believed behaviour could be represented along 3 dimensions:
  • Introversion ----> extroversion
  • Stability ----> neuroticism 
  • Self-control ----> psychoticism    
  • Eyesneck showed that criminals scored highly on extroversion, neuroticism and psychoticism 
• • Extrovert - constantly seeking excitement, stimulation, risk taking 
  • Link to criminal behaviour: risk taking from committing a crime and risking getting caught - may feel excitement from this also 
• • Neurotics - nervous, over-anxious/behaviour is difficult to predict 
  • Link to criminal behaviour: may commit crimes randomly as difficultly in predicting behaviours
• • Psychoticism - cold, unemotional, prone to aggression, low impulse control (this was added later) 
  • Link to criminal behaviour: low impulse control leads to inappropriate, criminal behaviours 
• • According to Eysenck - biological factors and socialisation result in the criminal personality (75% biological factors and 25% social) - interactionist theory 
• • biological basis to criminal personality
  • introverts - brain receives too much stimulation (ARAS is over-active) avoid environmental stimulation - also exhibit greater cortical arousal 
  • Extroverts - brain receives too little stimulation (ARNS is under-active) so they seek more stimulation from environment, links to risk taking - exhibit lower levels of cortical arousal 
• • People with a high extroverted and neurotic score are harder to condition (due to their nervous system-linking to biological factors) so less likely to learn anxiety responses (such as embarrassment) to antisocial impulses and as a result act anti-socially 
  • Biological factors of a person (nervous system)  mean they are not socialised properly and have a criminal factors 
• • Cortical arousal = the firing patterns of the neurons in the cerebral cortex 
  • Extroverts exhibit lower levels of cortical arousal 
• limitation of Eysenck's personality questionnaire -

  self report - risk of social desirability bias as it is a sensitive topic

  likert scale used - misinterpretation of scale creates bias

  low internal validity
• eysencks explanation supportive evidence -

  2070 European non-violent prisoners and 2422 non criminals did questionnaire - prisoners had higher scores for extroversion, psychoticism and neuroticism - shows theory may be a be an accurate explanation of criminal behaviour as the research is credible due to the large sample sizes. - This increases the external validity