Eysenck's criminal personality theory Flashcards
What are the 4 psychological explanations for offending behaviour?
- Eysenck’s criminal personality theory
- Cognitive explanations: moral reasoning and cognitive distortions
- Differential association theory
- Psychodynamic explanations
What is Eysenck’s general personality theory?
Behaviour could be represented along two dimensions: introversion/extraversion (E) and neuroticism/stability (N). They combine to form a variety of personality traits.
What 3 features did Ersenck say together made up the criminal personality?
Neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism.
What are the biological nervous systems of extraverts and neurotics?
Extraverts: Have an underactive nervous system, so constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours and do not learn from their mistakes.
Neurotics: Tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious and their general instability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict.
What is the role of socialisation that Ersenck theorised?
The type of nervous system a person develops can make them hard to condition so they never become properly socialised.
In what way is criminal behaviour immature?
Selfish and concerned with immediate gratification - impatient.
In the usual process of socialisation in a child, they are taught to be able to delay gratification and be more socially orientated.
What scale tests somebody’s personality?
Eysenck’s Personality Inventory (EPI)
‘E’ score measures how extravert you are
‘N’ score measures how neurotic you are
‘Lie’ score measures how socially desirable you are
What are the strengths of Ersenck’s Criminal Personality Theory?
- The methodology of the EPI questionnaire
- Research support for the explanation
Why is the methodology of the EPI questionnaire a strength?
- Lie scale reveals when a person is responding to with social desirability bias
- Full, clear instructions so answers from participants are correct
- Questions are mixed up so this reduces demand characteristics
- Forced choice answer options give more useful data, no ‘I don’t knows’
- Questions are in both directions so balances out acquiescence bias
These mean that internal validity is high for the EPI and the theory
What research supports Eysenck’s Criminal Personality Theory as an explanation of offending behaviour?
- Eysenck and Eysenck
- Studied over 2000 male prisoners and over 2000 male controls
- They measured them on E, N and P
- Found that criminals were higher on all 3
- This suggests the theory is valid
- However, Farrington reviewed several studies and found criminals were higher on only P
What are the limitations of Eysenck’s Criminal Personality Theory?
- The inventory is based on the assumptions that ‘personality’ is stable and measurable
- The explanation may be oversimplified
Why is the fact that the EPI is based on the assumptions that ‘personality’ is stable and measurable a limitation?
- Mischel argues ‘personality’ does not exist - we change the way we behave according to the situation and from day to day.
- By self-report, bias will affect accuracy (lie scale will detect this but then that data isn’t useful). Also, the scores are ordinal level data as the points on the scale are not mathematically related.
Why may the explanation of Eysenck’s Criminal Personality Theory for offending behaviour be oversimplified?
Digman says there are at least 5 personality factors including extraversion and neuroticism, as well as agreeableness (altruism, nurturing), conscientiousness and openness to new ideas.
So high E and N alone will not necessarily result in offending.
