Biological explanations of criminality

Candidates define extraversion as "outgoing and sociable" and stop — that answers a personality question, not a criminality one. Examiners report extraversion answers lost the second mark by not linking the trait to a type of criminal behaviour. Fix it with a two-part sentence: the trait, then the offending it predicts — under-arousal, so impulsive thrill-seeking offences.

Two dimensions, two different people, often swapped. Neuroticism = a nervous system reacting to stress quickly and very strongly (anxious, moody, slow to calm). Psychoticism = cold, aggressive, no empathy, linked to higher hormones. One-liner: neuroticism is feeling too much, psychoticism too little. And psychoticism is not psychosis — a personality dimension, not a disorder.

The reported failure is identification without justification: "one weakness is it uses self-report; one strength is it is scientific." Both labels are correct but earn no second mark; neither says what follows. Explain means three moves: point, then this matters because, then which means. Self-report, so a prisoner may answer to look acceptable, so scores may not be valid.

The misreading: Eysenck says criminals are born that way, so nothing can be done. What is inherited is a nervous system, not a crime. Offending follows only because those features make socialisation less effective, so environment is built in. The implication is the opposite: identify high-risk profiles early. Say makes offending more likely, never makes somebody a criminal.

Three linked errors. Scales, not boxes: everyone has a score on every dimension, and the criminal personality is a combination — high extraversion, neuroticism and psychoticism — so naming one is incomplete. Extraversion and introversion are one scale, not two separate traits; low extraversion is introversion. A score is not a diagnosis, not a disorder.

Introversion is the low-crime end of the extraversion scale, so it is not a cause of offending here. An introvert has high arousal already and is easily conditioned, so childhood punishment registers and the rule sticks. Writing the offender is introverted, so they offend reverses the theory. If a scenario person is quiet and solitary, look at psychoticism, not introversion.

A difference question is not two separate definitions — examiners credit that as an implicit difference worth one mark. The second mark comes from a connective: neuroticism reacts to stress too quickly, whereas psychoticism is a lack of feeling. Also: an improvement wants something done differently, and a conclusion is a judgement, not results repeated.

Even if offenders do score higher, that shows the two things go together, not that personality caused the offending. Years in prison could themselves change how someone answers questions about anxiety, so the direction is not established. State it as: the evidence is correlational, so a high score and offending are linked but one is not shown to produce the other.