eysenck's theory of criminal

• personality type which has biological basis responsible for criminal behaviour according to eysenck
• criminal personality comes from nervous system we inherit
• arousal is how easily our NS responds to stimulus which leads to innate offending behaviour
• three personality types linked to criminality - extravert , pyschoticism, neurotic
• extravert - chronically under-aroused nervous systems

  attention seeks for stimulation and hard to condition
• neurotic - easy to upset

  too anxious

  obsessive behaviours, system easily triggered by threats
• psychoticism - emotionally cold and cannot feel compassion
• most people score low on psychoticism and equally distributed on extravert-introvert scale and neurotic-stable scale
• MCGURK AND MCDOUGALL SUPPORT METHOD 


  gave eysenck personality questionnaire to 110 convicted inmates and 100 students
• MCGURK AND MCDOUGALL FINDINGS

  higher number of people with extravert, neurotic and psychotic personality types found within the group
• eysenck research on criminality SUPPORT

  2070 prisoners, 2422 controls aged 16-69, measured scores on EPI
• EYSENCK FINDINGS 


  on all measures, psychoticism, neuroticism, extravert, prisoners scored higher
• REFUTE BY FARRINGTiON 


  reviewed multiple studies, reported all offenders tended to score higher on P but not E and N
• BARTOL AND HOLANCHOCK METHOD _ CULTURE BIAS


  studied Hispanic and African- American offenders in max security prison

  divide into 6 groups based on nature of offence
• BARTOL AND HOLANCHOCK FINDINGS

  all 6 groups found criminals less extravert than non criminal control
• role of socialisation


  personality linked to criminal behaviour through socialisation processes
• socialisation


  process of s is when children learn to delay gratification and become more socially oriented
• believed those with hugh E and N scores had nervous systems that made it hard to condition and so could not learn easily to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety - they acted more anitsocially if there was opportunity to do so
• measuring the criminal personality - developed EPI, psychological test that locates people along the E and D dimensions to determine their personality. Later scale included psychoticism