Cards (6)

  • 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