EYSENCK’S PERSONALITY THEORY

~General Personality Theory~

• Eysenck was an important figure in personality and intelligence research, and in 1947 proposed that behaviour ran along 2 dimensions

  • Introversion/ Extraversion (e)

  • Neuroticism/ Stability (n)

• Later he introduced a 3rd dimension

  • Psychoticism (p)

• Eysenck proposed that offending behaviour is caused by having a criminal personality

• However, he argued that the criminal personality type is biological in origin (has an innate, biological basis) and comes about through the type of nervous system we inherit

~Biological Basis~

EXTRAVERTS:

• Have an under active nervous system, meaning that they constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours

• They tend to not condition easily and do not learn from their mistakes

  NEUROTIC:

• Individuals tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious and their general instability means that their behaviour is often difficult to predict

PSYCHOTIC:

• Individuals are suggested to have higher levels of testosterone and are unemotional and prone to aggression

~The Criminal Personality~

• The criminal personality type is neurotic-extravert (they score highly on measures of neuroticism and extraversion)

• The typical offender will also score highly on measures of psychoticism - a personality type that is characterised as cold, unemotional and prone to aggression

~The Role Of Socialisation~

• Criminal personality is linked to socialisation

• Developmentally immature in that it is selfish, and concerned with immediate gratification

• Through socialisation, a child is taught to be patient and socially orientated

• Eysenck believed that those with high E and N scores had nervous systems that made them difficult to condition. As a result, they would be more likely to act antisocially when the opportunity presented itself because they could not respond appropriately to antisocial impulses

EVALUATION

Research Support:

→ RESEARCH SUPPORT

• One strength of Eysenck’s theory is there is evidence to support the criminal personality.

• Sybil Eysenck & Hans Eysenck (1977) compared 2070 prisoners’ scores on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) with 2422 controls.

• On measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism - across all the age groups that were sampled - prisoners recorded higher average scores than controls.

• This agrees with the predictions of the theory that offender’s rate higher than others across the three dimensions Eysenck identified.

• However, Farrington et al (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of relevant studies and reported that offenders tended to score higher on measures of psychoticism, but not for extraversion and neuroticism.

• There is also inconsistent evidence of differences on EEG measures (used to measure cortical arousal) between extraverts and introverts, which cats doubt in the psychological basis of Eysenck’s theory.

• This means that some of the central assumptions of the criminal personality have been challenged.

  Conflicting Evidence:

  → TOO SIMPLISTIC

• One limitation is the idea that all offending behaviour can be explained by personality traits alone.

• Moffitt (1993) drew a distinction between offending behaviour that only occurs in adolescence and that which continues into adulthood. She argued that personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for, in the sense of whether someone is likely to become a ‘career offender’.

• She considered persistence in offending behaviour to be the result of a reciprocal process between individual personality traits on the one hand, and environmental reactions to those traits on the other.

• This presents a more complex picture than Eysenck suggested, that the course of offending behaviour is determined by an interaction between personality and the environment.

→ CULTURAL FACTORS

• A further limitation of Eysenck’s theory is that cultural factors are not taken into account.

• The criminal personality may vary according to culture. Bartol et Holanchock (1979) studied Hispanic and African-American offenders in a maximum-security prison in New York. The researchers divided these offenders into six groups based on their offending history and the nature of their offences.

• It was found that all six groups were less extrovert than a non-offender control group whereas Eysenck would expect them to be more extravert. Bartol et Holanchock suggested that this was because the sample was a very different cultural group from that investigated by Eysenck.

• This questions how far the criminal personality can be generalised and suggests it may be a culturally relative concept.