The Emergence of Violent Behaviour: An Examination of Individual and Social Factors: Personality Theory

Personality Theory

Individualistic explanations of criminality can go beyond the biological to consider the effects of cognition and personality in the emergence of violent behaviour.

Hans Eysenck first articulated his theory in Crime and Personality, published in 1964. He proposed that a child’s process of socialisation occurs through conditioning, as outlined by Pavlov. (See below image of Pavlov’s Classical Conditioning, famously known as Pavlov’s Dog). .

Antisocial behaviour is discouraged through punishment by parents or teachers and this produces a natural fear response which serves to maintain socially acceptable behaviour.

Following on from this notion Eysenck proposed that certain people condition more easily to their environment than others, and this is as a result of their personality, which is created by both biological and social factors.

Eysenck argues that conditionability is in a large part genetically determined by the inherited characteristic of one’s nervous system (Hollin, 1992). Personality, as outlined by Eysenck comprises three main dimensions: Extroversion (E), Neuroticism (N), and Psychoticism (P), each of which comprises a spectrum…