individual differences - eysenck's personality theory

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  • Created by: Elyseee
  • Created on: 24-02-21 14:23
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  • eysenck's personality theory
    • Eysenck’s theory of personality
      • Developed general theory of personality based on idea that character traits tend to cluster along 3 dimensions
      • Extraversion and neuroticism are most important - psychoticism was added later
      • Extraversion - introversion - extraverts characterised as outgoing, having positive emotions, get bored easily
      • Neuroticism - stability - tendency to experience negative emotional states rather than positive
      • Psychoticism - normality - egocentric, aggressive, impulsive, impersonal, lacking empathy, not concerned of welfare of others
    • Biological basis
      • Suggests each trait has biological basis that is mainly innate - claimed 67% of variance for the traits due to genetic factors
      • Extraversion - determined by overall level of arousal in person’s nervous system, person who is under-aroused requires more stimulation and an over-aroused would avoid stimulation, extraverts seek internal stimulation to increase cortical arousal, introverts innately over-aroused so seek to avoid/reduce stimulation
      • Neuroticism - determined by levels of stability (reactivity) in SNS, how much they respond in a situation of threat (fight/flight), neurotic person is slightly unstable so reacts/gets upset easily, stable personality has more unreactive nervous system and stay calm under pressure
      • Psychoticism - related to higher levels of testosterone, men are more likely to be found at this end of the spectrum
    • Link to criminal behaviour
      • Link between personality and criminal behaviour found in terms of arousal
      • Extraverts seek more arousal, engage in more dangerous activities
      • Neurotics are unstable, overreact to situations of threat, explains some criminal activity
      • Psychoticism linked to criminality through lack of empathy
      • Also explained criminality in terms of innate personality and socialisation - person is born with certain traits but interaction with environment is important in development of criminality
      • Can be seen in conditioning - to ‘normal’ people wrongdoing is avoided due to previous punishment (operant conditioning), results in future avoidance of that behaviour
      • Claimed people high in extraversion and neuroticism less easily conditioned, do not learn to avoid antisocial behavior (link between amygdala dysfunction and fear conditioning)

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