6 - Eysenck’s Theory of the Criminal Personality Flashcards
What did Eysenck believe about personality generally ?
Behaviour could be represented along two dimensions: introverstion/extraversion and neuroticism/stability.
The two dimensions combine to form a variety of personality traits. Eysenck later added a third dimension – psychoticism.
How do we get our personalities according to Eysenck?
Biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit from our parents.
Therefore, all personality types have an innate, biological basis.
How does Eysenck link the nervous system to personality traits?
Extraverts - underactive nervous system : constantly seeking excitement, and stimulation, and may engage in risk-taking behaviour. They are difficult to condition and so do not learn from their mistakes.
Neurotics - nervous, jumpy and over-anxious, and their general instability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict.
What is the criminal personality type?
Neurotic-extravert.
Will also score highly on psychoticism –cold, unemotional and prone to aggression.
How did Eysenck link personality to socialisation?
Criminal behaviour - developmentally immature in that it is selfish + concerned with immediate gratification.
During socialisation children are taught to delay gratification and be socially orientated.
High extraversion and neuroticism scores = nervous systems that made them difficult to condition, as a result they will not learn easily to respond to their anti-social impulses with anxiety. Consequently they are more likely to act antisocially in situations where the opportunity presents itself.
What is the Eysenck Personality Inventory?
A psychological test which locates respondents along the extraversion and neuroticism dimensions to determine their personality type.
A later scale was introduced that is used to measure psychoticism.
What are the advantages to Eysencks theory?
Eysenck compared 2,070 male prisoners’ scores on the EPI with 2,422 male controls. On measures of psychoticism, extraversion and neuroticism (across all age groups) prisoners scored higher than controls.
What are the disadvantages to Eysencks theory?
Several studies reviewed and reported that offenders tended to score higher on psychoticism, but not on extraversion and neuroticism, than non- offenders.
All offending behaviour being explained by a single personality type = reductionist. Crime is too varied and complex a behaviour to be due to one single personality type, the type of individual who commits murder is likely to be very different to one who commits fraud.
Out of step with modern personality theory. Digman’s Five Factor Model of personality suggests that openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness are important personality dimensions, in addition to extraversion and neuroticism. Using this model multiple combinations are available.
Cultural differences - studied Hispanic and African-American offenders in maximum security prison and divided them into six groups based on their criminal history and the nature of their offences. All six groups were found to be less extravert than non-criminal control groups.
Theory is based on idea that it is possible to measure personality through psychological tests - personality may not be reducible to a score in this way. Many psychologists believe there is no such thing as stable personality, on a daily basis people’s personality changes depending who they are with and the situation they are in.
