Crime and Personality

Abstract

This research looks at personality and criminality, in particular viewing the work of Professor Hans Eysenck’s model of the criminal personality. It is Hypothesised that Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism are not able to predict criminality, as previously suggested by Eysenck.

Subjects were divided into three areas, those that admitted to having committed a criminal offence (n = 22) and non-criminals (controls) which was split into two groups, undergraduate students (n = 26) and members of the public (n = 37), they were all given the Eysenck personality questionnaire - revised (EPQ-R) containing scores for psychoticism, Extraversion, neuroticism, criminality, addiction and lie. It can be seen that the Eysenckian theory of criminal personality found support in this study, in its linking of psychoticism and Extraversion to criminality, but not with the component of neuroticism, here students had the highest Neuroticism score. Also, when correlating P, E, and N with criminality it was found that although offenders had the highest Extraversion score they also had the lowest neuroticism score when compared to controls.

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