EYSENCK’S THEORY OF CRIMINALITY A Test on an American Prisoner Population

Felons in a maximum security institution were administered the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to test the validity of Eysenck’s theory of criminality on an American population. Comparison with a noncriminal control group found a significant difference in the L-scale, but none for P and N scores. E scores were significantly lower for the criminal group. When the criminal sample was divided according to offense type, differ-ences in P-scale and in neuroticism were also uncovered. When high L-scorers were elimi-nated from the sample, the criminal group scored higher on the P and N scale, but E scores remained similar to those of the control group. The results raise questions about the Eysenckian theory when applied to American Black and Hispanic prisoners. ysenck (1977) has postulated a general theory of criminality which predicts that criminals as a group will demonstrate significantly higher scores on the personality dimensions of psychoticism (P), extroversion-introversion (E), and neuroti-cism-stability (N), as measured by the Eysenck Personality Ques-at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 16, 2016cjb.sagepub.comDownloaded from 246 tionnaire (EPQ). The theory further supposes that criminal behavior is a result not only of learning and conditioning ex-periences encountered in an individual’s life, but also of in-herited features of the nervous system. While the theory has gained some support in studies using European prisoners who were primarily White and incarcerated for nonviolent offenses (Feldman, 1977; Bartol, forthcoming), the theory has not been sufficiently tested on American prisoners, particularly Black and Hispanic offenders incarcerated for a wide range of non-violent and violent offenses