Psychological Explanations Of Offending Behaviour: Eysenck's Theory

Question 1

Research on the genetic basis of personality:

Zuckerman (1987)

Answer 1

Z: found support in twin studies. Bf found a +.52 correlation for MZ twins on neuroticism compared with .24 on DZ twins, showing a large genetic component

However these figure aren’t as high as Eyeneck claimed, a .50 correlation means that 40% of the variance in these traits are due to genes

Also, MZ twins tend to be treated more similarly which may explain the higher percentage

Question 2

Personality may not be consistent:

Mischel and Peake (1982)

Answer 2

psychologists support a personality situational perspective in that people’s behaviours are consistent in similar situations but not across situations

M&P: support this. They ask family, friends and strangers to rate students in different situations and found no correlation between traits displayed

thus the idea of a criminal personality is flawed as people don’t just have one personality

Question 3

Personality tests may not be reliable:

Answer 3

the label given to a person depends on the answers they give on a personality questionnaire

people respond on the demands of the questionnaire and thus their responses may not reflect ‘reality’. Also people may also tend towards a socially desirable answer rather than being truthful

this is countered by the use of lie scales and when individuals lie on such questions, their data is discarded

Question 4

Support for the link between personality and criminal behaviour:
Dunlop et. al (2012)

Answer 4

D: found that both extraversion, psychoticism and lie scales were good predictors of delinquency.
Although this study was based on friends and minor offences

VD: found that only a small group of male offenders in juvenile detention had high scores on all 3 of Eyesneck’s variables