Eysenck’s theory

• Define ‘the criminal personality‘

  An individual who scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism and cannot be easily conditioned; is cold and unfeeling, and likely to engage in offending behaviour
• 3 personality characteristics in Eysenck’s personality theory linked to crime

  • Extraversion
  • Neuroticism
  • Psychoticism
• features of extraversion

  • under-active nervous system
  • constantly seeking excitement, stimulation + partake in dangerous activities
  • don’t learn from mistakes
• features of neuroticism

  • high levels of reactivity in sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight)
  • nervous, over anxious, unstable & unpredictable
• features of psychoticism

  • high levels of testosterone and unemotional + prone to aggression
  • anti-social
  • egocentric
• How did Eysenck measure personality types?

  EPI- Eysenck Personality Inventory
• Biological basis of extraversion

  Linked to low levels of cortical arousal ; therefore seek stimulation to raise arousal to optimum level
• Biological basis for neuroticism

  Linked to activity in the Limbic system and autonomic nervous system

  Individuals high in neuroticism react to stress quickly and to a greater degree
• Biological basis for Psychoticism

  Linked to higher levels of androgens (male sex hormones), so men are more likely to be found at this end of the spectrum

  Higher levels of testosterone linked to aggression
• What role does socialisation have in criminal behaviour

  • If socialisation was successful, thinking about behaving anti-socially produces anxiety
  • People with high E and N scores had nervous systems that made them difficult to condition 
  • As a result, they would not learn easily to respond to anti-social impulses with anxiety
  • Consequently, they would be more likely yo act anti-socially in situations where the opportunity presented itself 
• Strength of the criminal personality - Evidence

  • Eysenck compared 2070 prisoners on the EPI with 2422 controls
  • Found Prisoners recorded higher average scores than control group = offenders have higher rates than average across the 3 dimensions
• Counterpoint to evidence support for the criminal personality

  FarRemington conducted a meta analysis of studies reporting offenders tended to score highly on measures of psychoticism but not neuroticism or extraversion
• Limitation of the criminal personality - Too Simplistic

  Moffit

  Personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for and considered persistence in offending behaviour to be the result of a reciprocal process between individual personality traits + environmental reactions presenting a more complex picture than Eysenck
• Limitation- Cultural factors

  • Criminal personality may vary in culture 
  • Holanchock studied Hispanic + African-American offenders in prison in NYC and found all were less extroverted than a non-offender control group which would be expected to be more extroverted 
  • He suggested this was because the sample was a different cultural group than what Eysenck investigated, which questions how far the criminal personality can be generalised and suggest it may be a culturally relative concept 
• Strength of the criminal personality- measuring personality

  Eysenck‘s theory was a way to measure personality though the use of a psychological test which means we can see how the criminal personality differs across the 3 dimensions