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

A Computational Model of Affective Moral Decision Making That Predicts Human Criminal Choices

“…This is an important indication that making a criminal choice is dependent on the participants' personality, rational choice considerations, as well as emotions. This corresponds with recent informal models of criminal decision making [18,19,20]. Thereby the current findings strengthen these informal models.…”

“…Van Gelder [18] argues that criminal decision making processes, perceived as a particular kind of risk taking, may also be insightfully portrayed as invoking these two types of processing. According to the hot/cool perspective of criminal decision making, the cognitive, 'cool', processing mode is sensitive to risk considerations and is therefore likely to respond to notions of sanction severity and certainty, as suggested by deterrence theorists [18]. The cognitive mode is also responsible for balancing costs against benefits and making projections about the long-term consequences of decisions and, consequently, functions much in accordance with the logic assumed by rational choice theory.…”

“…These approaches are limited in terms of gaining insight into the decision making process, as they do not specify the psychological mechanisms according to which they operate [18] or how emotions influence the criminal calculus and alter concerns regarding risk.…”

Review of expertise and its general implications for correctional psychology and criminology

“…This is supported by ample evidence from neuroscience suggesting that those from offending backgrounds rely more on parts of the brain that govern more impulsive and immediate reactions (such as the amygdala) rather than the later developing areas in the pre-frontal cortex associated with effortful control (see Nee & Ioannou, forthcoming; for an overview). It is also known that under pressured conditions, one is likely to rely more strongly on automated responses (Bourke et al, 2012;Sellen & Norman, 1992;Van Gelder, 2012). This is clearly an area for future research with a variety of offender populations.…”

“…In this article we have drawn together scientific knowledge from allied areas of study which provide the basis of a theory of dysfunctional expertise. For various types of criminal behavior we now need to: 1) repeat some of the basic experiments from the cognitive psychology paradigm with experienced offender populations and a variety of control groups in order to test our predictions in a robust way (the majority of experimental research reviewed above has been done with typically developing populations who may perform differently to the specialist population of offenders, who often grow up in less than optimal conditions (Nee & Ioannou, forthcoming); 2) elucidate more clearly through mixed methods research some exacting questions about the decision chain: under what conditions might preconscious scanning develop into an intention to offend and is this always acted upon; how distant is this development in time and space from the actual offense; what automatic and reasoned processes occur during the offense; at what point on the decision chain and under what conditions will the best opportunities arise to re-evaluate the decision to commit a crime; what happens in the hours and days after the crime -a significantly overlooked area; and finally, the often neglected role (especially in acquisitive offenders) that emotion plays in decisionmaking at all of these points -(such as anger, guilt, shame and emotions associated with arousal, impulsivity and reward -see Day, 2009;Van Gelder, 2012;Van Gelder, Ellfers, Reynaud, & Nagin, 2013, for recent discussions of cognition and emotion in offenders. Little is known for instance, outside the world of sex offending, about how the decisionmaking process interacts with other internal moderators and cues such as fatigue, IQ, substance misuse, mental disorder and personality variables.…”