AO3

• Cultural bias - Bartol studied hispanic and African-American offenders in a prison in NY, divided the criminals into six groups based on their criminal history and nature of offence and found all groups were less extrovert than a comparison control group. It is suggested these findings were because his sample were very different to the one which Eysenck researched, questioning generalisability and application of his theory
• Theory is an example of biological determinism - criminal behaviour is not chosen by factors outside of individuals control eg biology, so inherited nervous system governs personality type and in some cases criminal behaviour, which is an issue when it comes to explaining crime as individuals can't be expected to have free will i.e. no ability to take control of their behaviour
• One problem with measuring criminal behaviour using the personality test is the high risk of social desirability, individuals may respond in ways they think the researcher wants them to.
• Personality is a very subjective, hypothetical concept to measure, so lacks validity.
• It is too simplistic to assume that criminal behaviour is the result of personality characteristics alone
• Eysenck’s theory of offending behaviour is too deterministic. It is possible to have high extraversion or neurotic scores and not commit crime.