Eysenck's Theory

Eysenck's theory of the criminal personality

The criminal personality: An individual who scored highly on measures of extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism and cannot easily be conditioned, is cold and unfeeling, and is likely to engage in offending behaviour.

Eysenck proposed that behaviour could be presented along two dimensions: introversion/extraversion and neuroticism/stability. The two combine forms a variety of personality characteristics or traits. He later on added a third dimension - psychoticism.

The criminal personality type is neurotic and extravert - they have a combination of all the characteristics of person who is either neurotic or extravert

Eysenck suggested that a offender will score highly on measure of psychoticism - this is a personality type where an individual is cold, unemotional and are aggressive.

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According to Eysenck - he believes that our personality traits are inherited (biological) and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit.

This means that all personality types such as the criminal personality have a innate, biological basis.

Extraverts - have a underactive nervous system this means they seek excitement, stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours, they don't condition easily and do not learn from their mistakes.

Neurotic - these people tend to be nervous, jumpy and over-anxious and their general instability means their behaviour is often difficult to predict.

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Eysenck linked criminal behaviour to socialisation processes
He saw criminal behaviour as developmentally immature in that they are selfish and want immediate gratification - this means they are impatient and cannot wait for things.
Socialisation is when children are taught to become more able to delay gratification and be more socially oriented and stable.
Eysenck thought that people who have high extravertism and neuroticism scores had nervous systems that made them difficult for them to condition to their social environment. As a result, they don't learn easily to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety. They are more likely to act antisocially (not sociable or wanting the company of others or contrary to the laws and customs of society, in a way that causes annoyance and disapproval in others) in situations where the opportunity presented itself.

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Eysenck developed the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI) which is a psychological test which locates respndents along the E and N dimensions to determine their personality type.

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There is evidence supporting Eysenck's theory. A research was conducted by Sybil Eysenck and Hans Eysenck. They compared 2070 male prisoner scores on the EPI with 2422 male controls. Groups were subdivided into age groups ranging from 16 to 69 years. They found that across all ages groups the prisoners had higher scores than controls which proves Eysenck's theory predictions to be right. They had high scores of psychoticism, extraverion and neuroticism.
- David Farrington et al found that offenders tended to score high on psychoticism but not for E and N. Whereas Eysenck's theory suggests that a offender scores high on P, E and N.
Eysenck's theory has been criticised because it assumes that all offending behaviour can be explained by a single personality type. Terrie Moffitt identified several distinct personality types of adult male offenders based on the timing of the offence, and how long offending has been going on for.
- It is also believed that Eysenck's criminal type is out-of-step (meaning out of date) with modern personality theories. For instance, John Digman's Five Factor Model of personality suggests that alongside E and N, there are additional dimensions of openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness. This means multiple combinations of personality types are available and therefore a high E and N score does not mean offending will happen.

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There is cultural bias in his work. Curt Bartol and Howard Holanchock looked into cultural differences. They studied on Hispanic and African-American offenders. They were divided into six groups based on their criminal history and the nature of their offence. They found that all six groups were found to be less extravert than a non-criminal control group.
- Bartol et al suggested that this is becuase their sample had different cultural people than that investigated by Eysenck, which shows that his work has a generalisability and representivness issue.
Eysenck shows how personality can be measure through the use of a personality test. However this has been criticised because personality type cannot be reduced to a score. Some critics say that on a daily basis our personality can change depending who we are with and the situation we are involved in.
Eysenck's theory supports biological explanations however does suffer the same limitations as genetic and neural explanations such as biological reducationism and determinism.

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