Eysenck's theory

• Eysenck argued our personality type has a biological basis, as the criminal personality is due to the type of nervous system we inherit. How easily the nervous system responds to arousal influences behaviour, potentially leading to innate offending behaviour.
• The three personality dimensions:

  • Introversion-Extraversion - Extraverts are outgoing due to chronically under aroused nervous systems. They are harder to condition as they fail to learn from mistakes. Introverts have an over aroused nervous system and so do not tend to seek attention.
• The three personality dimensions:

  • Neuroticism stability - Neurotics are easily upset, overly anxious and show obsessive behaviour due to a nervous system that is easily triggered by threats. People who are stable generally demonstrate calm and positive behaviours.
• The three personality dimensions:

  • Psychoticism - Measured on a scale of low to high. Psychotics are emotionally cold and do not feel compassion (heartless).
• The criminal personality type is high in all three ENP.
• The role of socialisation:

  • In Eysenck’s theory, personality is linked to offending behaviour via the process of socialization. This process includes teaching children to become more able to delay gratification, to be less selfish and the difference between right and wrong.
  • Individuals with high E and N makes people harder to condition so they are less likely to learn from previous punishment.
• Strengths of the theory:

  • Supporting evidence - McGurk and McDougall gave the personality questionnaire to 100 convicted inmates and 100 trade based students, aged 17-20. Social class of participants was controlled. Findings showed the higher number of people with E, N and P were in the delinquent groups.
• Limitations of the theory:

  • Reductionist approach - Personality traits are unlikely to all be accounted for using only 3 dimensions and measured by being assigned a single number. These traits are also likely to change depending on who we interact with and under what circumstances, thus not always being stable. This means that such a reductionist approach may not offer an accurate account of personality.
• Limitations of the theory:

  • Culture bias - Sample was drawn from a largely Western culture as suggested by Bartol and Holanchock. For example, these researchers found that a group of Hispanic convicts were less extravert compared to non-criminals (a control group), which suggests that Eysenck’s theory is not universal and so lacks generalisability to all cultures.
• Limitations of the theory:

  • Overly simplistic - Digman's 5 factor model includes other important dimensions of personality, including conscientiousness and agreeableness, suggesting the theory is limited.
• Discussion point:

  • While there is neurological evidence that criminality may be innate, in suggesting that is is based on the type of nervous system you inherit raises the same issues around biological determinism. For example, would it affect sentencing?