HANS EYSENCK

By : Helmi Habibi Hermansyah

NPM : 12519791
Class : 1PA09
Biography Hans Eysenck
■ Hans Jürgen Eysenck, PhD, DSc born in Germany on March 4, 1916. Both his parents are
celebrities. At the age of 2, Eysenck was forced to be raised by his grandmother because his
parents were divorced. After graduating from high school, Eysenck decided to move to
England because he hated Hitler and the Nazis. He received his PhD in 1940 from University
College London (UCL) in psychology.
■ Eysenck was professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychiatry King’s College London, form
1955 to 1983. He was a major contributor to the modern scientific theory of personality and a
brilliant teacher who helped found treatment for mental illnesses. Eysenck also created and
developed a distinctive dimensional model of personality structure based on empirical factor-
analytic research, attempting to anchor these factors in biogenetic variation. In 1981, Eysenck
became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. He was the founding editor of the
international journal Personality and Individual Differences, and wrote about 80 books and
more than 1600 journal articles. His son Michael Eysenck is also a noted psychology
professor. Hans Eysenck died of a brain tumour on September 4, 1997.
Hans Eysenck Theory
■ Eysenck’s Personality Theory
■ Hans Eysenck developed a very influential trait theory of personality, which has successful infiltrated the
public mindset with regards to how we think about personality in day-to-day life.
■ Using factor analysis to devise his theory, Eysenck identified three factors of personality: extroversion,
neuroticism and psychoticism.
■ Each of the Eysenck Theory factors is a bipolar dimension, meaning that each has a direct opposite:
■ Extroversion vs. Introversion
■ Neuroticism vs. Emotional Stability
■ Psychoticism vs. Self-Control
Defining the Eysenck Theory Factors
■ Extroversion : an orientation of one’s interests and energies toward the outer world of people and
things rather than the inner world of subjective experience. Extroverts are relatively more outgoing,
gregarious, sociable, and openly expressive.
■ Introversion : orientation toward the internal private world of one’s self and one’s inner thoughts
and feelings, rather than toward the outer world of people and things. Introvert are relatively more
withdrawn, retiring, reserved, quite, and deliberate. They may tend to mute or guard expression of
positive affect, adopt more skeptical views or positions, and prefer to work independently.
■ Neuroticism (unstable) : characterized by a chronic level of emotional instability and proneness to
psychological distress.
■ Emotionally stable : characterized by predictability and consistency in emotional reactions in
absence of rapid mood changes.
■ Psychoticism : a dimension of personality characterized by aggression, impulsivity, aloofness, anti-
social behavior, indicating a suspectibility to psychosis and psychopatic disorders.
■ Self control : the ability to be in command of one’s behavior (overt, covert, emotional, or physical)
and to restrain or inhibit one’s impulses.