What is Eysenck’s criminal personality?
A pattern of high extraversion, high neuroticism and high psychoticism that Eysenck argued increases the likelihood of offending.
What does high extraversion involve?
Sociability, stimulation seeking, activity, risk taking and a tendency to become bored with low stimulation.
What does high neuroticism involve?
Emotional instability, anxiety, strong reactions to stress and difficulty returning to a calm state.
What does high psychoticism involve?
Aggression, coldness, egocentricity, impulsivity, low empathy and non-conformity.
What biological mechanism did Eysenck link to extraversion?
Low baseline cortical arousal, which encourages stimulation seeking and may make conditioning less effective.
How does conditioning create a conscience?
Antisocial behaviour becomes associated with anxiety or punishment, so later thoughts or cues inhibit the behaviour.
What is the EPI?
The Eysenck Personality Inventory, a self-report measure of extraversion and neuroticism with a lie scale.
What is the EPQ?
The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, which measures psychoticism, extraversion, neuroticism and a lie scale.
What did Eysenck and Eysenck (1977) find?
Their male prisoner sample scored higher than male controls on P, E and N overall, broadly supporting the theory.
What is a key criticism of the single criminal personality idea?
Offenders are diverse, and research does not consistently show the same E-N-P pattern across offence types, cultures and samples.