Eysenck's theory of personality and child-adult emotional attachments

The present study was mainly designed to examine the link between child-adult emotional bonds and personality characteristics. A sample of Pakistani adolescents aged between 13 and 14 completed the Emotional Attachment Scale and the Eysenck Junior Personality Questionnaire. Adult subjects to whom the adolescent subjects were predominantly emotionally attached were also asked to complete the Eysenck Adult Personality Questionnaire. The results indicated that children tend to develop emotional attachments to those parents whose personality scores correlate significantly positively with theirs; however, if they attach to nonparent adults, no significant association between their personality scores and those for adults exists.     

A psychometric investigation of Eysenck's personality inventory

Eysenck's personality inventory (EPI) was administered to 653 females and 666 males. Item analyses were carried out for the subsamples and the combined sample. In addition hierarchical oblique factor analysis was applied to the data. The purpose of both item and factor analysis was to examine the psychometric properties of the EPI in regard to (a) the homogeneity of the scales, in terms both of internal and external item-scale relationships (b) the univocality of the scales assessed in factor analytic terms. It was found that the neuroticism scale was superior to the extraversion scale in both these respects.     

MMPI Scales for measuring Eysenck's personality factors

Four new MMPI Scales were constructed to identify Eysenck's personality factors of psychoticism, extraversion, and neuroticism as well as a lie score. The scales showed good construct validities against the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and the Friedman Overlap Scales developed from items in the MMPI. The study also supported the construct validity of the Friedman overlap scales.     

A commentary on Gray's critique of Eysenck's theory

Gray (1982a) criticizes Eysenck's theory of personality and offers his own alternative theory. In this article it is suggested that, for the most part, Gray's criticisms are not substantial. Little damage is sustained by the ‘Eysenckian edifice’ although it is proposed that the means of testing Eysenck's ‘conditionability’ hypothesis should be re-examined. Consideration of Gray's theory leaves one with the conviction that it is coming under increasing pressure as evidence accumulates concerning the mechanisms of the ‘anti-anxiety’ drugs. Apart from this and other problems, Gray's formulation is constructed within a narrow and specialized universe of discourse that does not relate well to the more global concerns of those who study personality. Without reference to Eysenckian concepts, Gray's theory is really only concerned with ‘anxiety’. For this reason it can barely be termed a theory of personality let alone one that might replace the Eysenckian paradigm.     

A new approach to Eysenck's theory of criminality

Studies examining Eysenck's theory of criminality by contrasting delinquent and non-delinquent groups have produced equivocal results. Some studies have shown criminals to score higher, as the theory predicts, on psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion, whilst other studies have not. The current study examines the theory from a new approach by using cluster analysis to demonstrate the heterogeneity of personality types in delinquent sample (N =100) and in a comparison group (N = 100).Four personality types were found in each group. Two personality types which were present in the delinquent sample were not found in the comparison group. The first type consisted of individuals scoring high on neuroticism and extraversion whilst the second type consisted of individuals scoring high on psychoticism, neuroticism and extraversion. These types appeared to be consistent with Eysenck's theory of criminality.     

The meaning of Eysenck's personality constructs and scales for Zimbabwean male students

Two studies of the utility of Eysenckian scale constructs for male African university students are reported. One confirms the previous findings that the EPQ, with some item changes, remains substantially reliable across cultures. The second was based on a larger item pool and shows that: (i) the integrity of the Neuroticism factor is confirmed, though fear-of-success items might usefully be added for African students; (ii) Sociability is the most robust component of Extraversion for this group, though the relationship with Impulsivity remains, contrary to predictions based on knowledge of African socialization; (iii) a factor of Restraint, Responsibility and Seriousness-of-purpose emerges, which could be interpreted as the converse of Impulsivity, or as a reflection of African values or motivation in this particular item pool; (iv) Motivation-for-success items group factorially, though their endorsement may reflect Social Desirability. These findings are interpreted both as a confirmation of Eysenck's personality theory for educated Africans, and as indicating the need for further exploration of scales which take the local behavioural referents of the Eysenckian factors into account.     

The impact of Eysenck's extraversion-introversion personality dimension on prospective memory

Prospective memory (PM) is memory for future events. PM is a developing area of research (e.g., Brandimonte, Einstein & McDaniel, 1996) with recent work linking personality types and their utilisation of PM (Goschke & Kuhl, 1996; Searleman, 1996). The present study compared 28 extraverts and 28 introverts on their short- and long-term prospective memory using the Prospective Memory Scale developed by Hannon, Adams, Harrington, Fries-Dias & Gibson (1995). The main finding was that extraverts reported significantly fewer errors on short- and long-term PM than introverts, and this difference could not be explained in terms of the number of strategies used to support prospective remembering. These findings are discussed in relation to differences between the personality types.     

The General Health Questionnaire and Eysenck's three-dimensional model of personality

A sample of 115 men and women between the ages of 20 and 60 completed the 30-item General Health Questionnaire together with the short-form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data indicate psychological distress so assessed is correlated .43 (p <.001) with Neuroticism and -.26 (p <.01) with Introversion but is unrelated to Psychoticism scores.     

Eysenck's theory of incubation: an empirical test

Eysenck's incubation of fear hypothesis that states that repeated CS-alone presentations can yield an increase in measures of fear was tested by first giving rats either a paired or an unpaired presentation of a tone CS and either a strong (3.5 mA), weak (1.05 mA) or no-shock US and then 10 daily CS-alone presentations. Over the CS-alone trials, conditioned fear, as measured by duration of freezing, latency to escape and activity scores, extinguished, rather than incubated.     

A theoretical basis for the major dimensions of personality

We argue that lexical studies of personality structure suggest the existence of six major dimensions of personality: (I) Surgency, (II) Agreeableness, (III) Conscientiousness, (IV) Emotional Stability, (V) Intellect/Imagination, and (VI) Honesty. We then propose a two‐part theoretical basis for these dimensions. First, Honesty and rotated variants of Agreeableness and Emotional Stability are interpreted in terms of three traits—fairness/non‐exploitation, forgiveness/non‐retaliation, and empathy/attachment—that underlie prosocial versus antisocial tendencies. Second, the Surgency, Conscientiousness, and Intellect/Imagination factors are interpreted as traits that involve active engagement within three domains of endeavour—social, task‐related, and idea‐related endeavour. Predictions that follow from these interpretations are tested and found to be supported. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Spanish adaptation of Dickman's impulsivity inventory: its relationship to Eysenck's personality questionnaire

We used exploratory factor analysis to determine the factorial structure of the Spanish adaptation of Dickman's impulsivity inventory in a sample of 355 university students. Our results showed the two impulsivity factors, functional and dysfunctional, described by Dickman (1990). We applied consensus direct oblimin rotation to the Spanish, American and Dutch versions of the inventory and obtained a high congruence between the three factorial solutions which seems to suggest that they are quite stable across languages and populations. Both kinds of impulsivity showed relationships to the extraversion and psychoticism dimensions of the EPQ-R although extraversion was more related to functional impulsivity and psychoticism was more related to dysfunctional impulsivity.     

The relationship between Eysenck's personality dimensions and Bem's masculinity and femininity scales revisited

A sample of 86 male and 93 female students in Wales completed the short form Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire together with the Bem Sex Role Inventory. The data indicate that high scores on the scale of masculinity are associated with high extraversion and low neuroticism, but unrelated to either psychoticism or the lie scale, while high scores on the scale of femininity are associated with low psychoticism, high neuroticism and high lie scale scores, but unrelated to extraversion.     

A possible genetic basis of accuracy in personality perception

An analysis was conducted to assess whether individuals are more accurate in perceiving those personality characteristics of other' that have a larger genetic component. Adult monozygotic (MZ) twins (63 pairs) and same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins (35 pairs) completed the Personality Research Form-E (PRF) and the Sibling Evaluation of Personality Characteristics (SEPC) which consists of 20 sets of adjectives corresponding to the 20 trait scales of the PRF. Subjects also evaluated their co-twin with the SEPC. Self-other agreement correlations were then correlated with the heritability estimates of the PRF traits calculated on the same twin sample. The results suggest that accuracy in perceiving the co-twin's personality does increase with the heritability component of the personality dimension.     

Venturesomeness, impulsiveness, and Eysenck's personality dimensions: a study among Australian adolescents

In Eysenckian personality theory, the dimension extraversion has traditionally consisted of two elements, sociability and impulsiveness. More recently, however, impulsiveness has become associated with the dimension psychoticism (Rocklin & Revelle, 1981), although subfactors of impulsiveness have been shown to be differentially related to extraversion and psychoticism (S. Eysenck & H. Eysenck, 1977). This study investigates the structures of impulsiveness and venturesomeness and their association with extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism, and psychoticism among 170 Australian adolescents. Both impulsiveness and venturesomeness were found to be multidimensional, although the subfactors differed slightly from those suggested by the Eysencks. No support was found for the view that impulsiveness narrowly defined is pathological, although the impulsiveness and venturesomeness subfactors were found to be differentially related to extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism, and psychoticism. The theoretical implications of these findings are briefly discussed.     

Reversal theory and personality: A review

Reversal theory is a new “mode-based” theory of motivation and personality which challenges some fundamental assumptions in these two fields and systematically develops an alternative account which emphasizes the complexity, changeability, and even inconsistency of much of behavior and experience. The present paper introduces some of the main concepts of the theory, including those of metamotivation, reversal, telic and paratelic modes, and telic dominance, and shows how the general approach involved can be characterized as “structural phenomenological.” The experimental, psychometric, psychophysiological, and other types of research which have been generated by the theory are reviewed and shown to be generally supportive of it.