Eysenck’s Personality Theory AO3

• +It takes into account both nature and nurture. Eysenck’s theory argues strongly that biological predispositions towards certain personality traits, combined with conditioning and socialisation during childhood, create our personality.
• +It allows for clear measurement of the personality traits via the EPQ.
• +Research evidence to support this theory came from Eysenck’s study of 2070 male prisoners and 2422 male controls. The prisoners scored higher on extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism than the non-criminal controls.
• -The E scale maybe measuring two separate traits, sociability and impulsiveness. Offenders only tend to score highly on impulsiveness.
• -While we can find correlations between traits and prisoners, we cannot use that to determine causality.
• -Maybe the impulsive criminals get caught, so the prison population is not representative of all criminal activity.
• -Eysenck’s tests used self-report questionnaires; these may not produce valid results because people may lie about themselves or not understand the question.
• -Farrington’s research could find no link between prisoners and extraversion, though he did find that prisoners tended to be neurotic and psychotic.