Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality
- Created by: maddieecarr
- Created on: 14-04-22 14:45
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- Eysenck’s theory of the criminal personality
- proposed that behaviour is represented along two (later three) dimensions
- Neuroticism/ stability
- Introversion/ extroversion
- (Later) psychoticism
- The biological basis of personality
- Neurotics have anxious traits and are difficult to predict.
- Extroverts have under active nervous systems and thus seek risky and stimulating behaviours.
- The criminal personality
- The most likely individual to offend has high levels of neuroticism and extroversion (and later high psychoticism)
- Socialisation
- The development of the criminal personality is through socialisation. Those with high E and N scores are harder to condition and so dont respond to punishment and impulse in the same way causing criminal behaviour
- Measuring the criminal personality
- Use of the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) which has items that relate to each I/E, N/S and P scores which determine how much of each an individual is.
- proposed that behaviour is represented along two (later three) dimensions
- Evaluating Eysenck’s theory
- Strengths
- Evidence from Eysenck and Eysenck found that prisoners had higher N and E scores that
- Weaknesses
- Criticised because not all high E and N people offend, and not all criminals are high N and E.
- Cultural bias as it is based on a white sample and does not account for personality differences in African Americans and Hispanic people
- biologically deterministic as it suggests that criminal personality is due to poor nervous system etc
- Personality cannot be reduced to just a simple score and a range of factors contribute to personality such as situation, emotion and people
- Strengths
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