Eysenck’s theory- psychological explanation

• Why is the theory seen as the half way point between a biological and psychological explanation?

  • Eysenck did acknowledge that personality traits have a biological basis
• What were the 2 dimensions Eysenck used?

  • Introversion- extraversion (e)
  • Neuroticism- stability (N)
  • Eysenck later added a 3rd dimension psychoticism- sociability
• Biological basis- Eysenck theory

  • Our personality traits are biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit.
  • All personality types including the criminal personality type have an innate, biological basis.
• Extraverts

  • Have an underactive nervous system, this means they constantly seek attention, stimulation and engage in risk-taking behaviours.
  • They do not learn from their mistakes.
• Neurotic

  • High levels of reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system- they respond quickly to threat.
  • This means they tend to be jumpy and overanxious and their instability makes their behaviour more difficult to predict.
• Psychotic

  • Individuals are suggested to have a higher level of testosterone and are unemotional
  • Prone to aggression
• Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality

  • Neurotics: Unstable and prone to overreact to situations of threat
  • Psychotics: Aggressive and lack sympathy
  • Extraverts; seek more arousal and engage in dangerous activities
• Role of socialisation

  • Eysenck believed criminal personality is linked to socialisation
  • He believed criminal behaviour was selfish and emotionally immature
  • People with high e and N scores are more difficult to condition due to their nervous systems. As a result they behave antisocially in situations that cause anxiety
  • The same way children are impatient and part of growing and learning through socialisation is learning that you have to delay gratification
• Measuring criminal personality

  • He developed the Eysenck personality questionnaire (EPQ)
  • The questionnaire located respondents along the E, N and P dimensions to determine their personality type
  • Enabled Eysenck to link personality to criminality
• Research support for Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality

  • Eysenck and Eysenck compared 2070 prisoners scores on the Eysenck personality questionnaire with 2422 controls
  • Results found that on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism across all the age groups sampled, prisoners recorded higher scores than controls.
  • Therefore, this supports the predictions of the theory that offender’s rate higher than average across the 3 dimensions identified by Eysenck.
• Theory is too simplistic

  • Moffitt drew a distinction between offending behaviour that only occurs in adolescence (adolescence-limited) and that which continues into adulthood (life-course persistent).
  • She argued that personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for, in the sense if whether someone is likely to become a career offender. Persistent offending behaviour may be the result of a reciprocal process between the individuals personality and environmental reactions.
  • Presents a more complex picture as offending behaviour
• Cultural factors have not been considered

  • Bartol and Holanchock studied hispanic and african-american offenders in a maximum security prison in New York. The offenders were divided into 6 groups based of their offending history and nature of offences.
  • Results found all 6 groups were less extravert than the non-offender control group where Eysenck would expect them all to be extravert. May be due to the sample group being a different cultural group that was investigated by Eysenck
  • Questions whether criminal personality can be generalised and suggests it may be a culturally relative concept.
• Issues with measuring personality

  • Personality type cannot be reduced to a score
  • Personality is too complex and dynamic to be quantified
  • People may he many different moods and personalities all at once and so the EPQ is not revealing stable criminal traits.
  • Therefore we cannot use the EPQ to measure criminality and offending behaviour as personality is not static and changes.