Psychological Explanations of Offending Behaviour

Question 1

What did Eysneck explain?

Answer 1

Eysenck (1982) explained criminal behaviour in terms of 3 biologically determined (innate)
personality traits.

Extraversion, neuroticscm, psychoticism

Question 2

What is Extraversion?

Answer 2

• The overall level of arousal in a person’s nervous system.
• Extraverts are under aroused and seek external stimulation to increase their cortical (brain)
  arousal and then engage in dangerous activities.

Question 3

What is neuroticism?

Answer 3

• The level of instability in the sympathetic nervous system. A neurotic person is someone who is slightly unstable and reacts/gets easily upset quickly.
• They are therefore prone to over-react to situations of threat, which would explain some
  criminal activity

Question 4

What is Psychoticism?

Answer 4

• A psychotic person is overly aggressive and lacks the ability to empathise with others’ feelings.
  -These behaviours are easily linked to criminality.

Question 5

A03 - Research - Research: Mischel and Peake (1982)

Answer 5

• One issue of this theory is the underlying assumption that personality is consistent.
• A number of psychologists suggest that people’s behaviour may vary systematically
  across situations. For example, someone may be relaxed and calm at home but quite
  neurotic at work.

-Mischel and Peake (1982) asked family, friends and strangers to rate 63 students in a variety of situations and found almost no correlation between traits displayed.

-Apparent regularity of behaviour is likely to be due to the fact we often tend to be in
similar situations.

-Therefore, the notion of a criminal personality is flawed as people don’t simply have a
single fixed personality.

Question 6

A03 - Social Influence

Answer 6

• Eysenck suggests that the three personality traits are caused by abnormal activity in the
  nervous system.
• However, personality traits can be learnt from peer groups, family members, or norms in
  a sub-culture (e.g. neighbourhood).
• These social influences could have a more significant effect upon behaviour than innate differences in brain structure.

-Therefore, it is likely that much crime is due to factors that are ignored in this biological
explanation.

Question 7

A03 - Biologically Deterministic

Answer 7

One weakness of Eysenck’s explanation for offending is that it may be seen to be
biologically deterministic.
-The criminal justice system assumes that individuals have free will and so punish
crimes on this basis.

• If Eysenck’s theory was assumed to be correct it would suggest that criminals are not
  truly responsible for their behaviour and therefore should not be punished.
  -This is important because it contradicts the legal system within which crime is
  prosecuted.