Essay
DISCUSS ONE OR MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF OFFENDING
A 16 mark essay on psychological reasons people offend
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DISCUSS ONE OR MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS OF OFFENDINGEysenck’s criminal personality has three components: psychoticism, neuroticism and
extroversion. He tested a group of convicted offenders against a control sample group on a
personality test. He found the offenders consistently scored higher than the control group in
all three areas suggesting the ‘criminal personality’ was psychotic, neurotic and they were
mostly extroverts. Extroversion refers to the type of person they are and scoring highly
would suggest they would be attention seeking, loud and confident. Neuroticism refers to
the likelihood that a person will be spontaneous and have random uncontrollable outbursts.
Finally, psychoticism refers to the emotional side and stability of a person and scoring highly
would suggest a lack there of.
One piece of evidence to support the criminal personality is that the traits are evident in the
some of the most dangerous offenders like psychopaths as they are affectionless, and they
are often found to overreact violently which is why they offend. However, the theory has
been criticised for being overly deterministic because not everyone with these traits
becomes an offender meaning the theory relies to heavily on dispositional factors to explain
offending behaviour.
Another piece of evidence to support the criminal personality is that it has been found to have
a biological basis. Zuckerman found a 0.52 correlation for MZ twins on neuroticism compared
to a 0.24 for DZ twins. He also Found a 0.51 correlation for
extraversion and similar data for psychoticism. This shows that there is a fair genetic
component in having a criminal personality. However, these figures may be slightly inflated
as MZ twins tend to be treated very similarly and so this evidence may lack validity.
A final piece of evidence to support the criminal personality is that people’s personality has
been found to be similar in similar situations as they are in the same head space and state of
mind and so they react consistently. However, people react differently across situations that
cause different emotions like being relaxed at home but being slightly neurotic at a stressful
work environment. This suggests that the idea of a criminal personality is flawed as people
don’t have just ‘one’ personality and these differences are shown through reactions to
different types of situations.
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