Eysenck

• Claims

  • psychological theory, Personality Theory
  • criminal personality is extroversion, neuroticism and psychoticism
  • extroverts seek arousal from risk taking
  • highly extroverted people will seek out antisocial behaviour and resist societal norms
• Components

  • created his Personality Inventory and factor analysis to reduce the number of traits down to 4
  • compared 2000 criminals to 2000 men
  • prisoners recorded higher results on neuroticism, extroversion and psychoticism
  • personality is 75% genetic and 25% environmental
• Credibility

  • considered both biological and physiological factors
  • scientific
  • can be repeated and generalised
  • evaluation of personality wasn't detailed enough
  • deterministic
• Application

  • Nick Leeson: committed fraud to make profits, enjoyed the thrill and risk of being caught
• Refuting Evidence

  • Halanchock 1979: studied Hispanic and African American prisoners, found many of them were less extroverted than the control group
  • Mischel 1988: personality is context dependant and is subject to change
• Supporting Evidence

  • Raine: Brain Abnormality
  • Rushton et al 1981: children with high levels of rule breaking scored higher for extroversion
  • Hare 2001: significantly more psychotic people with the tendency to be violent than the rest of the population