eyseysenk evaluation

Question 1

there is research support

Answer 1

Eysenck and Eysenck compared 2070 prisoner’s scores on the Eysenck Personality questionnaire (epq) with 2422 controls

On measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism across all the age groups that were sampled - prisoners recorded higher average scores than controls

This agrees with the predictions of the theory that offenders rate higher than average across the three dimensions of behaviour that Eysenk identified

Question 2

Counterpoint

Answer 2

David Farrington et al conducted a meta-analysis of relevant studies and reported that offenders tended to score high on measures of psychoticism but not extraversion and neuroticism

Question 3

too simplistic

Answer 3

One limitation is the idea that all offending behaviour can be explained by personality traits alone

Terrie Moffit drew a distinction between offending behaviour that only occurs in adolescence and which continues into adulthood

She argued that personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on, in the sense whether someone will go on and be a career offender

She considered persistent behaviour to be the result of a reciprocal process between indicudi=ual personality traits, on one hand, and environmental relations to those traits on the other

This presents a more complex picture than what Eysenck suggested