Eyesneck's theory of the criminal personality

Question 1

What is the general personality theory

Answer 1

Eysenck proposed that behaviour could be proposed along two dimensions.
Introversion/extraversion
Neuroticism/ stability

Eyesnwck later added a third dimension of psychoticism

According to Eysenck our personality is biological In origin and comes from what type of nervous system we inherit from their parents. All personality types including the criminal personality have a biological basis.

Extroverts for example have an understudies nervous system and so seek excitement and ion and they are hard to conditions and don’t learn from their mistakes

Neurotic people are nervous and over
anxious and their instability makes them hard to predict

Question 2

Criminal personality

Answer 2

The criminal personality type is neurotic- extrovert, Eysenck also said many offenders would score highly on psychoticism which means they are unemotional and prone to aggression.

Children are taught to delay gratification and move away from instant gratification which makes them more socially oriented, extroverts are hard to condition so so they will not learn quickly and respond with anxiety to their any social impulses .

Eysenck developed the Eysenck personality inventory, it’s a psychological test which locates the person along two arises of extroversion and neuroticism and later a scale for psychoticism was added.

Question 3

Eysecnk’s theory weaknesses

Answer 3

• ) Farringtom conducted servers studies and found that criminal scored higher on psychoticism, but not on extraversion and neuroticism.
• ) The idea that offending behaviour can explained by a single personality type is to simplistic and crime is complex a behaviour to be due to one single personality type, ie people which commit murder are very different from those who commit fraud.
• ) Barton and Holanchock found that in Hispanic and African American offenders in maximum security prisons are less extroverted then the control groups. So the theory could be culturally biased
• ) The theory is based on the idea that you can measure personality through a test but many people say that you can’t reduce personality to a score and people’s personality changes depending on who they are with and what situations they are in.