personality theory - Eysenck

• Criminality is innate and caused by a specific personality traits
• Personality traits

  • Extraversion
  • Introversion
  • Neuroticism
  • Stability
  • Psychoticism
• Extraversion

  Sociability, seeking excitement and sensation, aggressive, short tempered
• Introversion

  Reserved, serious, quiet, reliable
• Neuroticism

  Anxious, moody, over reactive
• Stability

  Calm, even-tempered
• Psychoticism

  Insensitive and doesn’t care about others
• People fall somewhere on a scale of extraversion and introversion (referred to as E)
• People fall somewhere between neuroticism and stability (N)
• High on extraversion and low on neuroticism - optimistic
• Low on extraversion and high on neuroticism - pessimistic
• Criminal personalities

  • EN
  • PEN
• EN

  High extraversion, high neuroticism
• PEN

  High psychoticism, high extraversion, high neuroticism
• Eysenck argues that personalities are innate so genetics and nervous systems may play a part in the type of personalities we develop
• strengths of Eysenck -

  • one of the first theories to quantify a criminal personality
  • used tools such as the EPQ to measure traits
  • there is research evidence
  • Rushton and Christjohn (1981) compared scores with self reports of delinquency in students
• limitations of Eysenck -

  • reliant on the use of self report surveys
  • no way of knowing if the surveys are honest or accurate
  • not possible to establish cause and effect