Eysenck’s Personality

typology
Identifying and Measuring the Main Dimensions of Personality
Extroversion
Neuroticism
Psychoticism
The Role of Socialization
Identifying and Measuring the Main
Dimensions of Personality
• Eysenck defined personality as a more or less stable and enduring
organization of a person’s character, temperament, intellect, and physique,
which determines his unique adjustment to the environment.
• Character denotes a person’s more or less stable and enduring system of
cognitive behavior (will); temperament, his more or less stable and
enduring system of affective behavior (emotion); intellect, his more or less
stable and enduring system of cognitive behavior (intelligence); physique,
his more or less stable and enduring system.
• Thus, his definition emphasized traits (stable and enduring characteristics),
which, when clustered together, are organized as types.
• Eysenck’s typology is hierarchically organized, and consists of types, traits,
and habits.

• Types are most abstract, followed by traits, and then habits.

• Specifically, each of the type concepts is based on a set of observed

intercorrelations among various traits.

• Each trait, in turn, is inferred from intercorrelations among habitual

responses.

• Habitual responses, in turn, are based on specific observable responses.

• On the basis of numerous factor analyses of personality data gathered
from different subject populations all over the world, Eysenck derived
two factors that could readily be labeled introversion/extraversion
and stability/neuroticism.

• Later, on the basis of other statistical analyses, he postulated a third

dimension, impulse control/psychoticism .

• These three dimensions, according to Eysenck, are the major

individual difference types most useful in describing personality
functioning.
The Role of Socialization
• According to Eysenck, socialized conduct is mediated by conscience,
which he defines as the sum total of an individual’s learned or
conditioned responses.
• Individuals learn behaviors that run counter to their own wishes in
order to avoid being punished by authority figures such as parents,
teachers, and clergy.
• For example, they must learn to be clean, not to defecate or urinate
whenever and wherever they please, and to control their sexual and
aggressive impulses.
• They also must learn not to lie, not to fight with others who disagree
with them, and not to steal.
• Any performance of these behaviors meets with punishment.
• Thus, through conditioning, individuals learn to desist from
performing behaviors that society believes harmful.
• The members of society also reward individuals for exhibiting certain
behaviors, and thereby shape their behavior in ways that society
considers acceptable.
• Individuals differ in the degree to which they learn the rules of
society.
• Specifically, Eysenck proposed that introverts learn the rules more
quickly and efficiently than do extraverts.
• He believes that the basis for these differences is genetic: introverts
have chronically higher cortical arousal than do extraverts; arousal
tends to facilitate learning; therefore, introverts learn more readily
than extraverts
• Because it is more difficult for extraverts to learn societal rules, they
tend to be under socialized, whereas extreme introverts tend to be
over socialized.
• Extraverts are less mature generally than introverts; that is, introverts
learn how to behave appropriately (in line with societal demands) at a
much earlier age.
• Because they are less readily conditioned, extraverts experience less
inhibition with respect to antisocial behavior.
• Thus, criminals tend to be extraverted.
• Extraversion in combination with neuroticism, Eysenck noted,
facilitates the development of criminality.
• Research has also shown that it is primarily the impulsivity rather
than the sociability component that is related to criminality
• Introverts, in contrast, are characterized by an over readiness to form
very strong consciences; they tend to be wracked by guilt and anxiety
whenever they think about violating the rules of society.
• As a result, they are unlikely to turn to crime.
• Eysenck believed that, under stressful conditions, extreme
introversion may lead to obsessive compulsive, phobic, or depressive
behavior.
• Eysenck also explained the shyness of neurotic introverts in terms of
their innate arousal levels.
• Shyness is likely to occur in social situations characterized by stress,
such as meeting new people or facing the possibility of criticism or
disapproval by authority figures.
• Psychoticism and intelligence level have also been linked to antisocial and
criminal behavior.
• Criminals tend to have low IQs, according to Eysenck.
• One possible explanation, he suggested, is that people whose intelligence
is low enough to prove a handicap in achieving educational success will
find it difficult to earn a satisfactory living along conventional lines and,
therefore, may turn to crime.
• Critics argue that it is not low intelligence that causes criminality, but
rather the criminals’ socioeconomic background.
• More specifically, they argue that the criminals’ poverty deprives them of
opportunities to increase their IQs through education, so that eventually
they are motivated to engage in illegal activities.
• But Eysenck maintained that the scientific evidence shows that IQ has an
effect on criminal behavior independent of social class (and race, for that
matter).