forensic: Eyesenck's theory Flashcards
Who proposed a theory that acts as a ‘halfway house’ between biological and psychological explanations of crime?
Hans Eysenck
His theory addresses both psychological aspects and acknowledges biological bases.
True or False: Eysenck’s theory completely disregards biological causes of crime.
False
Fill in the blank: Hans Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality would be properly classed as _______.
[psychological]
What did Eysenck propose about offenders?
Offenders have distinctive, inherited, genetic personality traits
suggests a link between genetics and criminal behavior
What are the three key traits of the criminal personality according to Eysenck?
Neuroticism, extraversion, psychoticism
Define extraversion
Sociable, craves excitement and change, can become bored easily, carefree, optimistic, impulsive
Extraversion contributes to risk-taking behaviors.
Define neuroticism
Causes instability, prone to overreacting to stimuli, quick to worry, anger, or fear
High neuroticism may lead to emotional disturbances.
define psychoticism
Lacking in empathy, cruel, a loner, aggressive, troublesome
psychoticism has been linked to high levels of testosterone
Fill in the blank: A person high in _______ is much more unstable and prone to overreacting to stimuli.
neuroticism
explain psychoticism
Individuals are suggested to have higher levels of testosterone and are unemotional and prone to aggression
explain neuroticism
Individuals that have a high level of reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system – they respond quickly to situations of threat (fight or
flight). This means they tend to be more nervous, jumpy and overanxious, and their general instability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict
explain extraversion
Have an underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk -taking behaviours They also tend not to condition easily and therefore do not learn from their mistakes
what kind of gratification are offenders socialised into
Immediate gratification – offenders are impatient and cannot wait for things
Eysenck believed those with high Extravert and Neurotic scores had nervous systems that made them difficult to condition
they are less likely to learn anxiety responses to antisocial impulses > they would be more likely to act antisocial in situations where the opportunity presented itself
what does EPQ stand for
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
AO3: too simplistic
Moffitt(1993) drew a distinction between offending behaviour that only occurs in adolescence
(adolescence-limited) and that which continues into adulthood (life-course-persistent).
She argued that personality traits alone were a poor predictor of how long offending behaviour would go on for, in the sense of whether someone is likely to become a ‘career offender.’ > persistence in offending behaviour is the result of a reciprocal process between the individual personality traits on the one hand, and environmental reactions to those traits on the other
LIMITATION offending is more complex than Eyesenck suggested
AO3: research to support
Sybil Eysenck and Hans Eysenck (1977) compared 2070 prisoners’ scores on the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) with
2422 controls on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism – across all age groups that were sampled – prisoners
recorded higher average scores than controls
STRENGTH > proves he was right to assume offenders would score higher
COUNTER: Farrington et al (1982) conducted a meta-analysis of relevant studies and reported that offenders tended to score
high on measures of psychoticism, but not for extraversion and neuroticism
There is also inconsistent evidence of differences on EEG measures (used to measure cortical arousal) between extraverts and introverts (Kussner, 2017)
LIMITATION as central assumptions have been challenged
AO3: cultural bias
criminal personality might vary according to culture Bartol and Holanchock (1979) studied Hispanic and African-American offenders in a maximum security prison in New York
The researchers divided these offenders into six groups based on their offending history and the nature of their offences. It was found that all
six groups were less extravert than a non-offender control group whereas Eysenck would expect them to be more extravert
They suggested this was because the sample was a very different cultural group from that investigated by Eysenck
LIMITATION as it’s a culturally relative concept
AO3: lack of validity
it attempts to measure personality through the EPQ
Critics have suggested that personality type may not be reducible to a ‘score’ in this way
personality is far too complex and dynamic to be quantified. This would also apply to a personality
deemed to be ‘criminal.’
LIMITATION as it attempts to make personality measurable, but personality is too complex to be reduced to a questionnaire
