Eyesnck

• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) shows individuals inherit a particular type of nervous system which controls how they adapt to their environment
• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) says there are 2 aspects to personality introverted/extraverted and neurotic/stable
• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) later added a third dimension of psychotic
• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) says high psychoticism, high extraversion, and high high neuroticism
• general personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) says extraverts have an under active nervous system causing them to take part in risk taking behaviour
• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) says neurotics are overly anxious and unstable making their behaviour hard to predict
• General personality theory (Eyesnck 1947) says psychotics have high levels of testosterone making them aggressive
• Eyesnck (1947) saw criminality as a result of failed socialisation during childhood
• Eyesnck (1947) says people with high extraversion, psychoticism, and neuroticism are difficult to condition as they have not learned the norms and values of society properly through socialisation
• Strength; research support from eyesnck who compared 2070 prisoners and 2422 controls on the eyesnck personality inventory and found prisoners on average scored higher on extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism
• Weakness; Farrington's (1982) meta analysis found prisoners score higher psychoticism but not neuroticism or extraversion
• Weakness; Moffitt (1993) found only a limited difference in adolescent and adult offenders and that personality traits were not a good indicator of whether people would become persistent offenders
• Weakness; Bartol and Holanchock (1979) found offenders were less extraverted than non-offenders due to their cultural group