A03 Eyesenck's theory Flashcards
What did Farrington (1982) find after conducting a meta analysis?
They reported that offenders tended to score high on measures of P, but not for E and N.
There is also little evidence of consistent differences in EEG measures (used to measure cortical arousal) between extraverts and introverts (Kussner, 2017) which casts doubt ton the physiological basis of Eyesenck’s theory.
This is a limitation as it means that some of the central assumptions of the criminal personality theory have been challenged.
Explain Moffitt’s (1993) findings in distinguishing between offender behaviour that only occurs in adolescence and that which continues into adulthood.
She considers persistence in offending behaviour to be a reciprocal process between individual personality traits and environmental reactions to those traits.
This is a limitation as it shows there is a more complex picture that Eyesenck suggested that offending behaviour is determined by an interaction between personality and the environment
Explain Bartol and Holanchock’s (1979) study looking into cultural differences
studied hispanic and African-american offenders in a maximum security prison in New York and divided these into six sub groups based on their criminal history and the nature of their offence.
It was revealed that all six groups were less extravert than a non-criminal control group.
Bartol suggested that this was because their sample was a very different cultural group than investigated by Eyesenck, which questions the generalisability of the criminal personality.
This is a limitation as it does not take into account cultural factors.
Explain what is wrong with the theory being based on a personality scale
Critics have suggested that personality type may not be reducible to a ‘score’ in this way, many argue that there is no such thing as personality - in the sense of a stable entity.
On a daily basis we may change our personality based on the who we are with and the situation were are involved in (mischel 1988).
There may be no fixed and unchangeable ‘true self’ directing our behaviour, criminal or otherwise.
This is a limitation as it mat undermine any claims Eyesenck made about being able to identify ‘natural’ offenders using the EPI as personality may not be static
