Eysencks theory Flashcards
What was Eysenck’s general personality theory?
He said that behaviour could be represented along two dimensions: introversion/extraversion and neuroticism/stability. He later added psychoticism.
What did he propose about the biological basis?
He said that our personality traits are biological and so a criminal personality type has an innate basis. He said that extraverts have an underactive nervous system, meaning they seek excitement and making them likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours. They also tend not to condition very easily and so struggle to learn from mistakes. Neurotic individuals tend to be nervous and jumpy, making behaviour difficult to predict.
What did he say was a criminal personality?
A neurotic extravert who also scores highly on measure of psychoticism-a personality type characterised as cold and unemotional.
What did Eysenck propose about socialisation?
He said that personality is linked to criminal behaviour via socialisation. He says criminal behaviour is immature and concerned with immediate gratification and children undergo socialisation to delay gratification. People with high E and N scores struggle to be conditioned and so they are more likely to act anti-socially in situations.
How did he propose we measure criminal personality?
He developed the Eysenck Personality Inventory, a form of psychological test which locates respondents along the E and N dimensions to determine personality types.
What is the strength of Eysenck’s theory?
There is research support from Eysenck and Eysenck as they found higher levels of E and N scores amongst criminals than in non-criminals.
What are the weaknesses of Eysenck’s theory?
There is counter evidence as Farrington reviewed studies and found little evidence for higher E and N scores in criminals
There is another theory proposed called the 5 factor model, which says there are other factors which contribute to offending and you cannot just say it is due to E and N.
Culture bias as it was conducted on Hispanics and African-American prisoners and it was found they had lower extraversion levels than the general public.
Biological determinism means there are legal issues as people can argue they weren’t responsible for committing crimes.
It isn’t a good measurement of personality as it is being reduced to a score which ignores other factors which may effect behaviour such as who you are around.
