There are many theories and explanations as to why crime occurs or why some individuals become criminals while others do not. Some theories or explanations focus on the individual and other theories focus more on the social elements that can lead an individual to engage in criminal activity. It is difficult to concretely determine which theories or explanations are better or more complicit than others, given the situational nature of crime. Through the examination of psychological positivism, focused on the personality traits of the individual, and strain theory, it will become clear that all cases of crime are different and are decided by a number of different factors in this that concerns the individual, meaning that no theory or type of theory, whether social or individual, is a more compelling theory than another. Since positivism as a whole is based on scientific understandings of crime and criminality, it is assumed that there is a clear difference between what is classified as "normal" and what is classified as "deviant" and these differences are studied to try to understand what causes deviant or criminal behavior in some people but not others. The positivist approach maintains that behavior is predetermined and that this behavior is influenced by biological or psychological factors. An important psychological factor is that of personality, as shown by the work of Hans Eysenck. In Eysenck's personality theory, personality has three dimensions that influence whether or not a person engages in criminal or deviant behavior: the first dimension is whether an individual is more introverted or extroverted, the second dimension is whether an individual is more neurotic or . ..... middle of paper...... the criminal was most likely a white man, in his 30s, from Washington, while the actual snipers were two black men, one aged 17 years old and the other 41 years old, originally from Washington. west coast of America. Cases like these tend to weaken the strength of psychological positivism as a theory. Another major criticism of psychological positivism concerns the research behind it, with many studies behind psychological positivism being discredited due to the researcher's limited ability to control all variables in the experiment. Looking specifically at Eysenck's personality theory, research by Farrington (1982) showed that offenders scored higher on psychoticism and neuroticism, but not extraversion. This goes against Eysenck's original thinking, but this particular study is considered more acceptable by other researchers because it compares criminals to non-criminals.