Psychological Explanations - Mental Health and Personality, personality theory

Personality theory

Eysneck (1952) emphasises the link between biological factors, personality and crime. Personality differences grow out of our genetic inheritance. Eysneck identified three dimensons: extroverson and interoverson; neuroticism and stability; psychoticism and altruism. Later Eysneck and McGaurk (1980) tested for implusivenesss and found offenders score significantly higher on implusiveness than non-offenders. Eysneck made this the four dimension. Individuals differ on an hereditary basis on their ability to be conditioned and in the speed and firmness with which they build up conditioned responses. Those high in psychoitisism suffer from the inhibition of learning through conditioning (prevents the acquistion of strong fear or guilty reactions regarding anti-social impluses). Furnham (1984) and Farrington (1992) conducted studies that demonstrated that psychoticism is related to delinquency and criminality. 

Eysneck argues that…