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 activities. It is difficult to draw a concrete conclusion about which theories or explanations are better or more conniving than others, given the situational nature of the 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 factors other than the individual, which means that no theory or theory type of theory, be it social or individual, is more a more convincing theory than another. Since all positivism is based on scientific conceptions of crime and criminality, it is assumed that there is a clear difference between what is classified as the "normal" and what is classified as "deviant" and these differences are studied to look for to understand what causes deviant or criminal behavior in some people but not in others. The positivist approach argues that behavior is predetermined and that this behavior is influenced by biological or psychological factors. A great psychological factor is that of personality, as demonstrated by the work of Hans Eysenck. In Eysenck's personality theory, there are three dimensions of personality that influence whether or not a person engages in criminal or deviant behavior, the first dimension is the time an individual is more introverted or extroverted, the second dimension is the time which an individual is more neurotic or... ..... middle of paper ......riminal was most likely a white male, in his thirties, from Washington, while the actual snipers were two black males, one of whom he was 17 and the other 41, who were from the west coast of America. Cases like these tend to diminish the strength of psychological positivism as a theory. Another major criticism of psychological positivism is the research behind it, with many studies behind psychological positivism having been discredited due to the researcher's limited ability to control all the variables in the experiment. Looking specifically at Eysenck's personality theory, research conducted by Farrington (1982) showed that delinquents scored higher on psychoticism and neuroticism but not extraversion, this goes against Eysenck's original thinking, however this particular study is considered more acceptable by other researchers than criminals to noncriminals.