Psychological Approach (criminal Personality) Flashcards
What’s introversion?
-personality trait characterised by a focus on internal feelings rather than on external sources of stimulation.
-introversion is manifested in more reversed and solitary behaviour.
What’s Extravision?
-personality trait characterised by a focus on external sources of stimulation to gain pleasure.
-tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behaviour.
-under active nervous system. This means that they’re constantly seeking excitement, stimulation and are likely to take risks.
What’s neuroticism?
-broad personality trait dimension representing the degree to which a person experiences the world as distressing, threatening and unsafe.
-individuals who score high on neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody and to experience such feelings as anxiety, worry, fear, anger, frustration, envy, jealousy, guilt, depressed moof, and loneliness.
What do neurotic people act like?
-respond worse to stressors and are more likely to interpret ordinary situations as threatening and minor frustrations as hopelessly difficult. They’re often self-conscious and shy they may have trouble controlling urges and delaying gratification.
-high level of reactivity in the sympathetic nervous system- they respond quickly to threat. This means that neurotic individuals tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious and their general instability makes their behaviour difficult to predict.
A biological basis…
-according to Eysneck personality traits are biological and come from the type of nervous system we inherit.
-therefore, all personality types have an innate biological basis.
The role of socialist action
-an individual who scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism cannot easy be conditioned.
-Eysenck saw criminal behaviour as developmentally immature in that its selfish and concerned with immediate gratification.
-socialisation teaches children to become more able to delay gratification and become more socially oriented.
-However,people with high N and E scores had nervous systems making them difficult to condition. They dont learn easily to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety. Therefore, they would be more likely to act antisocially in situations where the opportunity presented itself.
The criminal personality
-as an individual who scores highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism is likely to engage in offending behaviour because these personality types ‘mix’ together.
-this creates an individual who is cold, unemotional, prone to agression, jumpy, difficult to predict that seeks excitement and stimulation and is likely yo engage in risk-taking behaviours
-its measured using the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI). This locates respondents along the E and N dimensions to determine the personality type.
-later a scale for psychoticism was introduced.
Psychoticism
Personality, pattern typified by aggressiveness and interpersonal hostility.
Such individuals are thought to lack empathy, be cruel, and often loaners .
They have higher levels of testosterone and high psychoticism leads to a personality type of cold and emotional and prone to aggression .
