Evaluation

• + Eysenck‘s criminal personality take into account of both nature and nurture. He argued that biological (nurture) factors affect whether someone is an introvert or extravert and socialisation (nurture) affects whether someone is able to delay gratification. This is a holistic approach to studying criminality as it takes into account all aspects of human development.
• + If this theory is correct and tendencies towards criminal behaviour are detectable in childhood, then it may be possible to intervene at an early stage to prevent such development. This could lead to interventions based on parenting or early treatment and thus reduce crime.
• -individuals are tested to see if they have a criminals personality through questionnaire. people may not respond exactly the same to the same questions everyday or every time. Alternatively, they may provide an answer that they believe the researcher expects or desires. this makes his criminal personality test unreliable.
• -Eysenck theory suggest that part of personality is genetic and therefore cannot change. However, whether someone is introverted/ extraverted or neurotic/ stable can change over time. Therefore, the theory fails to consider that personality changes over time.
• -It doesn’t have the ability to discuss criminals who are introverted such as school shooters who are not social making it not applicable to the theory because it stated it has to be a personality of high extraversion and neuroticism.
• -The theory does not explain why some individuals with these traits do not commit crimes but others do. It also ignores other psychological explanations such as cognitive psychology which suggests that offenders think differently from non-offenders.