PEN، پنج عامل بزرگ، بزهکاری نوجوانان و تکرار جنایات جنایی

The aim of this study was to examine which of the two personality models, PEN or Big Five, differentiates best between Dutch juvenile offenders (n = 96) and college students (n = 204), between Dutch self-reported recidivists (n = 43) and non-recidivists (n = 14), and between officially recorded recidivists (n = 37) and non-recidivists (n = 24). Students (mean age = 17.23 years) and offenders (mean age = 18.63 years) filled out the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire Revised and the Short Big Five Questionnaire. Occurrence and severity of recidivism were measured by a self-report questionnaire and by official police records. Students were higher than offenders on PEN’s Extraversion and the Big Five dimensions Agreeableness and Openness. PEN’s Extraversion appeared to be higher in officially recorded recidivists compared to non-recidivists. PEN’s Psychoticism, Big Five’s Neuroticism and Agreeableness differentiated self-reported recidivists from non-recidivists. Only PEN’s Psychoticism predicted severity of self-reported recidivism. Proposals for future research in recidivism are formulated.

In this study relationships among personality, delinquency and recidivism are examined from the perspective of two influential personality theories: Eysenck’s PEN model and the Big Five model. Eysenck’s PEN model (Eysenck, 1977) is one of the few theories that explicitly related personality traits to criminality (see Eysenck & Gudjonsson, 1989). However, this model has not often been used to explain recidivism after a period of incarceration. The Big Five model (see Goldberg, 1990) is relatively new, and seems to be the dominant model of personality traits today. It is to some extent related to the PEN model, but has scarcely been used to study relations between personality and delinquency or recidivism. In this study we analysed which of both models (PEN or Big Five) is better able to differentiate between an offender sample and a normal sample of college students, and between recidivists and non-recidivists. According to Eysenck, 1977 and Eysenck, 1998 the three basic PEN dimensions of personality (Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism) are related to physiological mechanisms in the brain and central nervous system (CNS). Through the working of the CNS and the related conditioning processes (Eysenck & Gudjonsson, 1989), it could be convincingly theorized that delinquents should score high on the PEN dimensions. However full empirical support for Eysenck’s hypothesis has not been found. Studies are conclusive in their findings that high Psychoticism is always involved in criminality, regardless of age, and both in offender as well as in normal samples. Mixed results though, have since long been found for Neuroticism and Extraversion (Blackburn, 1993). Some studies found high Psychoticism and high Neuroticism to be associated with juvenile delinquency in both offenders (Romero, Luengo, & Sobral, 2001) and college students (Heaven & Virgen, 2001). Other studies found Psychoticism and Extraversion instead of Psychoticism and Neuroticism to be positively related to juvenile delinquency in offender samples (Aleixo & Norris, 2000) and normal samples (Heaven, 1996). Daderman (1999) found Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism to be significantly higher in juvenile offenders compared to a non-delinquent control group. In another study of Daderman (Daderman, Meurling, & Hallman, 2001) only differences with regard to Extraversion were found, while Morizot and Le Blanc (2003) concluded that antisocial individuals are not typically different in this domain. In research on relations between personality and delinquency, less attention has been paid to recidivism. Recidivism might be considered as a persistent form of delinquency. Only one study examined the relation between the PEN dimensions and juvenile recidivism. Eysenck and Eysenck (1974) measured Psychoticism, Extraversion and Neuroticism of 187 boys in a juvenile detention centre. Approximately three years later, reconviction rates of these boys were checked. Non-recidivists were significantly lower on Extraversion. No significant differences were found with regard to Psychoticism and Neuroticism. The Big Five model (Goldberg, 1990) also includes Extraversion and Neuroticism, but next to Extraversion and Neuroticism also Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness. Empirical results of several studies have shown that Extraversion and Neuroticism of both models show high resemblance and that Psychoticism is negatively related to Agreeableness and Conscientiousness (Eysenck, 1992; Costa & McCrae, 1992). The state of Openness is less clear. Eysenck, 1991 and Eysenck, 1992 considered Openness to be part of Psychoticism, but empirical results did not support this hypothesis (Avia et al., 1995; Scholte & De Bruyn, 2004). Saggino (2000) and Scholte and De Bruyn (2004) suggested that Openness might be part of Eysenck’s Extraversion. Others mean that Openness is not measured in Eysenck’s model (Costa & McCrae, 1995). We found three studies that reported on relations between the Big Five and self-reported delinquent behaviour in non-clinical samples. John, Caspi, Robins, Moffitt, and Stouthamer-Loeber (1994) found that delinquent boys (12–13 years old) who reported burglary, drugs dealing and strong arming behaviour, scored lower on Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Openness and higher on Extraversion than non-delinquent boys. Heaven (1996) studied a group of 16–19 year old students and found Neuroticism to be positively, and Conscientiousness and Agreeableness to be negatively related to self-reported vandalism. van Aken, van Lieshout, and Scholte (1998) described three personality types in adolescents, based on a cluster analysis of Big Five scores: Undercontrollers, Overcontrollers and Resilients. The three types were each divided into two subtypes, and all six subtypes were compared on self-reported delinquent behaviour. The most delinquent subtype, the antisocial undercontrollers, was characterized by extremely low scores on Agreeableness and Conscientiousness, and moderate scores on Extraversion, Openness and Neuroticism compared to resilient adolescents. As far as we know, no study reported on relations between the Big Five and juvenile recidivism. As it stands now, the Big Five model seems not to offer greater power in revealing personality-criminality associations than the PEN model, but we lack a sufficient number of studies to draw firm conclusions. Therefore, the primary aim of our study was to enlarge the body of knowledge by comparing the power of both models in differentiating between juvenile offenders and a normal sample of college students, and between juvenile recidivists and non-recidivists. We also wanted to tackle two methodological issues we had met in studying the literature: the assessment of delinquent behaviour (self-report versus official records) and the parameters used to assess recidivism (occurrence versus severity). In studies on delinquency and recidivism, there is discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of self-reported delinquent behaviour and official records (see Babinski, Hartsough, & Lambert, 2001). The most important limitation of self-reported delinquent behaviour is the possibility of socially desirable answers. Because of the (expected) unwillingness of respondents to report on severe offences, self-report lists often address the less serious forms of crime. The most important limitation of official records is that they do not report on undetected crime, the issue of dark number. So, in this study both self-reported offences and official police records were used to measure recidivism. The other issue concerns the assessment of recidivism. In studies on recidivism, often a dichotomy between recidivists and non-recidivists is applied. Those who committed one or more offences after release, are considered to be re-offenders, and those who did not commit any offence after release are regarded as non-recidivists. This dichotomy implies that recidivists can be looked upon as a homogeneous group. However, it is questionable whether this is a proper assumption. For example, a person who re-offends by stealing a bike and a person who re-offends by committing an armed robbery, are both recidivists, but the severity of the committed offences varies considerably. Therefore, in the present study both parameters of recidivism, occurrence and severity, were used. According to the aims of this study, we formulated three research questions. (1) Which model, PEN or Big Five, differentiated best between juvenile offenders and a sample of college students? (2) Which model, PEN or Big Five, predicted best the occurrence of recidivism? (3) Which model, PEN or Big Five, predicted best the severity of recidivism?