Eysenck's Theory of Offending Flashcards
General Overview of Theory
He proposed that behaviour could be represented along two dimensions; introversion/extroversion and neuroticism/stability. They combine to form a variety of personalities and characteristics. He later added a third dimension of psychoticism/sociability.
Overview of biological basis
Our personality traits are biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous systems we inherit, meaning all personality types have an innate biological basis.
What is the biological basis for extraversion?
They have an underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek excitement, stimulation, and are likely to engage in risk taking behaviour. They are not conditioned easily and do not learn from their mistakes.
What is the biological basis for neuroticism?
They have a high level of reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system so respond quickly to situations of threat. They tend to be nervous, jumpy, or overanxious, and their general stability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict.
What is the biological basis of psychoticism?
They have high levels of testosterone so are unemotional and prone to aggression.
What is the criminal personality?
Neurotic-extravert-psychotic. Neurotics are unstable and prone to overreact to situations of threat, extraverts seek more arousal and engage in dangerous activities, psychotics are aggressive and lack empathy. They cannot be conditioned easily and leads to them being cold and unfeeling. This is the cognitive aspect.
What is the role of socialisation?
Criminal behaviour has developmentally immature aspects in that it is selfish and concerned with immediate gratification. During socialisation children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and more socially orientated. Those with high E and N scores are difficult to condition and so would not learn to respond easily to antisocial impulses with anxiety so more likely to act antisocially in situations.
How can the criminal personality by measured?
He developed the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) which is a psychological test which locates respondents along the E, N, and P dimensions to determine their personality type. This part is important as it enables them to conduct research relating personality variables to other behaviours.
What is the strength of this theory?
There is supporting research.
Eysenck and Eysenck (1977) compared 2070 male prisoners’ scores on EPQ with 2422 male controls and divided the groups into age groups, 16 to 69. They found that prisoners recorded higher scores of extraversion and neuroticism than controls supporting the criminal personality.
This then supports the idea as it shows that criminals have the personality of extraversions/neuroticism which is what Eysenck’s theory suggests.
What is the counter and elaboration of the strength?
However, critics suggest that personality type may not be reducible to a score in this way. Personality is too complex and dynamic to be quantified. This then suggests that this research is not measuring personality properly which then reduces the validity and credibility of the explanation.
Furthermore, this idea is supported by Farrington et al (1982) who reviewed several studies and found that offenders tended to score high on psychoticism measures, but not extraversion/neuroticism. This then supports that it isn’t a good measure of personality because they found different results which could be because it doesn’t measure personality effectively.
Therefore, although there is supporting evidence, this may not be a good measure of personality and so casts doubt over the explanation.
What is a weakness relating to contradictive research?
There is contradictive research which suggests extraversion isn’t needed for a criminal personality.
Bartol and Holanchock (1979) studied Hispanic and African American offenders in a maximum security prison in New York and revealed that all participants were found to be less extravert than a non-criminal group.
This then means that extraversion may not be a part of the criminal personality and so Eysenck’s theory may be inaccurate in explaining criminal behaviour if a key aspect isn’t really needed, there may be other aspects that aren’t needed e.g. neuroticism.
However, this research suffers cultural bias as it was only done with Hispanic and African American prisoners.
Furthermore, this research only focuses on those in maximum security so wouldn’t cover white collar crimes.
Therefore, although there is research that doesn’t support extraversion, it might just be that certain groups of criminals do not require extraversion, questioning its ability to explain all types of criminal behaviour meaning, further research is needed to give clarity to the theory.
What is a weakness of the theory?
There is evidence suggesting there are other factors.
Maffitt (1933) proposed several types of male offenders and how long offending persists.
Furthermore, Digman’s (1990) Five Factor Model of personality suggests that alongside E and N, there are other dimensions like openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness suggesting more combinations for the criminal personality.
This could be considered reductionist for not considering other factors involved, especially as other psychologists have considered these multiple factors.
Therefore, Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality needs to be adapted to become a full explanation of criminal behaviour.
