The eysenck personality inventory in male and female subnormal psychopaths in a special security hospital

Abstract

The EPI was administered to a sample of 264 male and female subnormal psychopaths at a special security hospital. The males were not significantly different from the general population norms in Neuroticism and Extraversion. The females were significantly more neurotic than the males and the general population. Both sexes were higher than the normal range in the Lie scale, and male patients lied more than female patients about their behaviour. The majority of female patients described themselves as neurotic extraverts, as hypothesized by Eysenck (1964). No similar trend was observed in the males. Lying was found to be correlated with intelligence in both sexes, and with age in males. ‘Liars’ congregated mainly in the non‐neurotic introvert quadrant and ‘truth‐tellers’ in the neurotic extravert. The ‘absolute’ meaning of these personality categories was considered to be obscured by (a) misinterpretation of the wording in some items, and (b) motivational distortion due to the circumstances of obtaining test results from a criminal population interviewed for clinical rather than for research purposes. 1968 The British Psychological Society