Eysenck psychological explanations
- Created by: ceza56
- Created on: 28-03-19 17:04
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- Eysenck
- AO1
- General personality theory
- Eysenck involved in proposal that behaviour could be represented along two dimensions - introversion/extroversion and neuroticism/stability. Third dimension added later - psychoticism
- Biological basis
- Personality is biological in origin so all personality types have an innate basis
- Extraverts have underactive nervous system and so constantly seek excitement and neurotics tend to be nervous, jumpy and over anxious
- Neurotic extroverts so a combination of over anxious and does not learn from mistakes
- Criminal personality
- Neurotic extroverts so a combination of over anxious and does not learn from mistakes
- Also score high on psychoticism measure and characterised as cold and emotionless
- Role of socialisation
- Criminal behaviour = developmentally immature as selfish and concerned with immediate gratification
- Children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and become more socially oriented - Eysenck though people with high N and E did not condition to this
- Measuring criminal personality
- Eysenck created EPI - a self report psychological test which locates respondents on the E and N scales
- General personality theory
- AO3
- Supporting evidence
- compared 2070 male prisoners EPI with control group of 2422 males. Prisoners split into sub groups from 16-69 years and in all,prisoners scored higher on E and N and P
- Supports Eysencks idea that criminal personality is linked to NE
- Decreases generalisability of findings
- Beta bias
- Only men used and applied to all so underestimates differences between sexes
- Decreases generalisability of findings
- Only men used and applied to all so underestimates differences between sexes
- compared 2070 male prisoners EPI with control group of 2422 males. Prisoners split into sub groups from 16-69 years and in all,prisoners scored higher on E and N and P
- Culture bias
- Bartol and Holanchock
- looked into dultural differences between hispanic and african american prisoners in New York max security
- Divided into six groups and found that they scored lower on E than non criminal groups - contradicting eysencks predictions and so suffers from culture bias and cannot be generalised to all
- looked into dultural differences between hispanic and african american prisoners in New York max security
- Bartol and Holanchock
- EPI
- Self report technique so particpants may lie due to social desirability bias
- Reduces internal validity of results
- Self report technique so particpants may lie due to social desirability bias
- Biological basis
- Recognises importance of biological factors so not as reuctionist as other approaches, such as genetic explanations
- Supporting evidence
- AO1
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