individual differences - personality theory evaluation
- Created by: Elyseee
- Created on: 24-02-21 14:32
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- personality theory evaluation
- Link between personality and criminal behaviour
- Research comparing criminals to non-criminals
- Dunlop et al 2012 - extraversion and psychoticism as well as lie scales were good indicators for delinquency. However, participants were all students and their friends (aged 15-75), delinquency was assessment of minor offences committed within last 12 months
- Van Dam et al 2007 -found only a small group of male offenders in juvenile detention centre had high scores on all 3 variables
- Genetic basis of personality
- Support from twin studies
- Zuckerman 1987 - found +0.52 correlation for MZ twins on neuroticism compared with +0.24 for DZ twins, shows large genetic component. Extraversion figures were +0.52 MZ and +0.12 DZ, provided similar data for psychoticism
- Genetic component is not as high as eysenck claimed - only about 40% variance is due to genes, figure may be slightly inflated as MZ twins are treated more similarly
- Personality may not be consistent
- Theories based on personality assume personality is consistent
- Psychologists support situational perspective - people are similar in certain situations but not across situations eg) Someone may be relaxed at home but neurotic at work
- Mischel and Peake 1982 - asked family and friends to rate 63 students in a variety of situations, found almost no correlation between traits displayed, regularity of behaviour likely to be due to them often being in similar situations
- Notion of criminal personality is flawed, people do not have ‘one’ personality
- Personality may not be consistent
- Issue with theory of personality - label given depends on answer provided on a personality questionnaire eg) Eysenck’s personality questionnaire
- Answering EPQ is answering to demands of the questionnaire, asked to select traits that apply to them but responses may not represent reality
- People may tend towards socially desirable answer, so answers are not truthful
- Countered by lie scale - someone who answers yes consistently to lie scale is likely dishonest through questionnaire, leaning towards socially desirable answers, their data is discarded
- Score on personality test in unlikely to enable identification of criminals
- Traits are good predictors of delinquency, but not close enough to use as a means of detecting criminals
- Link between personality and criminal behaviour
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