Eysenck’s Theory of the Criminal Personality (AQA A Level Psychology): Revision Note

Personality theory & offending behaviour

• Personality theories are based on the idea that traits which are fixed (i.e., in place) from birth contribute to subsequent behaviours, e.g. aggression, violence, deception

• Eysenck (1947) proposed that behaviour could be represented along two dimensions, introversion/extraversion (E) and neuroticism/stability (N), later adding a third dimension, psychoticism (P)

  • These dimensions combine to form a variety of personality characteristics or traits

• Eysenck developed the Eysenck Personality Inventory (EPI), a form of psychological test which locates respondents along the E and N dimensions to determine their personality type, with a later scale introduced to measure psychoticism

• According to Eysenck, personality traits are biological in origin and come about through the type of nervous system we inherit, so all personality types including the criminal personality have an innate biological basis

  • Extraverts have an underactive nervous system which means they constantly seek excitement and stimulation and are likely to engage in risk-taking behaviours, and they also tend not to condition easily and do not learn from their mistakes

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

• The criminal personality type is neurotic-extravert, combining the characteristics of both dimensions

• Eysenck believed that the typical offender will also score highly on measures of psychoticism, a personality type characterised as cold, unemotional and prone to aggression

Measuring personality

• The EPI is a questionnaire which measures the above dimensions; it can be used to determine the extent to which a person can be described as having a ‘criminal personality’

• The EPI uses a dichotomous scale to measure each dimension, asking questions with Yes/No responses such as: 

  • Do you often long for excitement?

  • Are you usually carefree?

  • Do you find it very hard to take no for an answer?

  • Do your moods go up and down?

  • Would you do almost anything for a dare?

• Eysenck linked personality to criminal behaviour through socialisation, seeing criminal behaviour as developmentally immature in that it is selfish and concerned with immediate gratification

  • The process of socialisation teaches children to become more able to delay gratification and more socially oriented, but people with high E and N scores have nervous systems that make them difficult to condition

    • This means that they do not learn easily to respond to antisocial impulses with anxiety and are more likely to act antisocially when the opportunity arises

• Eysenck claimed that the above combinations of personality traits are the reason why some people commit a crime 

Research which investigates Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality

• Singh & Rani (2017) tested 100 criminals and 100 non-criminals on different personality traits using the EPI

  • They found that criminals scored higher on extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism, with the key predictors of criminal personality being unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of inferiority, risk-taking, irresponsibility, assertiveness and impulsiveness 

• Farrington et al. (1982) reviewed several studies and reported that offenders tended to score high on measures of psychoticism, but not for extraversion and neuroticism

  • There is also very little evidence of consistent differences in EEG measures, used to measure cortical arousal, between extraverts and introverts, which casts doubt on the physiological basis of Eysenck's theory

Evaluation of Eysenck’s theory of criminal personality

Strengths

• Eysenck's theory recognises that personality may have a genetic basis and thus fits well with other biological explanations, with some overlap with research into APD, as offenders are cold, uncaring and incapable of empathy

• Eysenck's theory bridges biological and psychological explanations, proposing that an inherited nervous system produces personality traits which then interact with socialisation experiences to determine whether someone offends

  • This is a strength because it avoids the crude biological determinism of genetic explanations as a high E and N score creates a vulnerability, but offending only follows if conditioning during childhood has failed

Limitations

• Eysenck's theory is built on the premise that it is possible to measure personality through a psychological test, but critics argue there is no such thing as a stable personality of the kind Eysenck was talking about

  • Mischel (1988) argues that on a daily basis we display many different parts of our personality, which may change depending on who we are with and the situation we are involved in, so there may be no fixed and unchangeable 'true self' directing our behaviour, criminal or otherwise

• The idea that all offending can be explained by a single personality type has been challenged, e.g., Moffitt (1993) proposed several distinct types of adult male offender based on when offending starts and how long it persists

  • Digman's (1990) Five Factor Model adds openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness alongside E and N, so many combinations are possible and a high E and N score does not make offending inevitable

Issues & Debates

• Eysenck's use of the EPI demonstrates a nomothetic approach, as it seeks to identify general personality traits applying across all offenders, and it is also biologically deterministic in attributing criminality to an inherited nervous system

  • However, this raises the question of how offenders can be held responsible for their behaviour if their personality type is innate