Beyond Rational Choice: the Hot/Cool Perspective of Criminal Decision Making

Abstract

This paper proposes a general framework of criminal decision making that assumes both ‘cool’ cognition and ‘hot’ affect, i.e. feelings, to influence criminal choice. Drawing from judgment and decision making research and social psychology, the hot/cool perspective extends rational choice and deterrence theories by explaining how affect is likely to influence criminal decisions alongside cognitive considerations, such as the perceived costs and benefits of crime. It is shown how the hot/cool perspective offers a more realistic account of criminal decision making processes than existing decision models and approaches and also allows for the explanation of criminal behaviors that are difficult to explain in terms of rational choice.

Keywords:

• rational choice
• deterrence
• emotions
• affect
• criminal decision making
• dual-process models

Acknowledgements

I thank Henk Elffers, Michael Tonry, Reinout E. De Vries, Scott Jacques, Loran Nordgren and Marcus Felson for helpful suggestions and/or comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

1. Situational theories such as situational crime prevention (Clarke, 1997) and routine activities theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979; Felson, 2002), are also situational perspectives premised on the notion of a reasoning or rational offender who engages in a cost-benefit analysis when making his decision to engage in crime or not. In other words, these are also rational choice-based approaches to crime.

2. Nagin and Pogarsky (2001, p. 885) note that “in decision making parlance, the criminal opportunity presents a choice between a sure thing (restraint from the criminal act), and a gamble that arises because the contemplated conduct can produce a gain with some probability and a loss with complementary probability.” In other words, a criminal decision is a kind of risky decision.

3. The distinction between anticipatory and immediate affect presented in this section is largely drawn from Loewenstein et al. (2001) and Loewenstein and Lerner (2003).

4. Gilbert (1999) notes that because there are no tangible referents for the processes as specified in dual-process models, there is generally no proper way to count them and rule out the possibility that there may in fact be more than two processes. It is however clear to most psychologists that there is more than one (Gilbert, 1999). Deutsch and Strack (2006) add that the assumption that there are exactly two processes is not implied by duality theories. Systems are regularly interacting groups of processes that share the same computations or functions. Accordingly, the two systems entail multiple processes.

5. It could be argued that the tendency to let short-term benefits prevail over long term costs can be brought under the explanatory scope of strictly cognitive models through the notion of hyperbolic time discounting, i.e. the finding that people care more about the same time delay if it occurs earlier than if it occurs at a later time. In other words, the value of a later reward is discounted by a factor that increases with the length of the delay. That is, even though people normally choose options that give substantial weight to long-term costs and benefits, when making decisions with immediate consequences, they will tend to be place disproportionate weight on immediate costs and benefits. However, Loewenstein and Lerner (2003) note that hyperbolic discounting has significant limitations as an explanation for impulsivity for two reasons. First, it does not explain why people display impulsive behavior in certain situations (e.g. when they are hungry, sexually aroused, angry or frightened) but not in others. Thus, the hyperbolic discounting perspective has difficulty accounting for situation- and reward-specific variations in impulsivity. Second, hyperbolic discounting cannot explain why many situational features other than time, such as physical proximity and sensory contact with the desired object commonly lead to impulsive behavior (Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003, p. 625).

6. Note that this points towards individuals differences in the strength of the hot and the cool mode in individuals.