Lesson 5: Eysenck’s Theory of The Criminal Personality Flashcards
Eysenck’s Theory of The Criminal Personality
According to Eysenck (1947) our personality traits are biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit from our parents. Therefore, all personality types have an innate biological basis.
Offenders have distinctive inherited/genetic personality traits, they are high in neuroticism, extraversion and psychoticism.
People with a high extraversion score are impulsive and seek sensation which draws them to the thrill of criminal behaviour.
People with a high neuroticism score tend towards offending because they are unstable and unpredictable. Eysenck believed that people with a high neuroticism score had inherited a nervous systems that made them difficult to condition, as a result they will not learn easily from their mistakes.
People with high psychoticism are cold, lack empathy and are prone to aggression
- Farrington et al. (1982) reviewed several studies and reported that offenders tended to score higher on psychoticism, but NOT on extraversion and neuroticism, when compared to non-offenders.
- The idea that all offending behaviour can be explained by a single personality type has been heavily criticised as being simplistic. Crime is too varied and complex a behaviour to be due to one single personality type, the type of individual who commits murder is likely to be very different to one who commits fraud.
- Eysenck ‘s theory is out of step with modern personality theory. Digman’s (1990) Five Factor Model of personality suggests that openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness are important personality dimensions, in addition to extraversion and neuroticism.
- Bartol and Holanchock (1979) looked into cultural differences. They studied Hispanic and African-American offenders in a maximum security prison in New York and divided them into six groups based on their criminal history and the nature of their offences. All six groups were found to be LESS extravert than non-criminal control groups. This means Eysenck’s theory could be culturally biased.
- Eysenck’s theory is based on the idea that it is possible to measure personality through psychological tests. Critics have argued that personality may not be reducible to a score in this way. Many psychologists believe there is no such thing as stable personality, on a daily basis people’s personality changes depending who they are with and the situation they are in.
