Time discounting and criminal behavior

Åkerlund, David; Golsteyn, Bart H.H.; Grönqvist, Hans; Lindahl, Lena

doi:10.1073/pnas.1522445113

Cited by 68 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 35 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…Go/no‐go performance also predicted risk of rearrest in two studies (Aharoni et al, ; Steele et al, ). Finally, a large longitudinal study of risk factors among Swedish children found that impulsive delay discounting at age 13 prospectively predicted criminal behaviour in adulthood (Åkerlund et al, ).. These findings suggest that performance on technology‐based impulse control measures could be investigated as a screening tool to predict risk of future criminal involvement and other maladaptive behaviours.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One form of impulsive decision‐making is delay discounting, or the tendency to seek immediate, smaller rewards instead of larger rewards that are delayed in time. Not surprisingly, previous research has found that offenders exhibit problems delaying gratification on delay discounting tasks (Åkerlund, Golsteyn, Grönqvist, & Lindahl, ; Carroll et al, ; Lee et al, ; Mishra & Lalumière, ). In addition, steeper devaluing of delayed rewards significantly predicts future engagement in criminal behaviour, even after controlling for several other known risk factors (Lee et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

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Technological advances in the assessment of impulse control in offenders: A systematic review

Vedelago

Amlung

Morris

et al. 2019

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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Deficits in impulse control have been linked to criminal offending, risk of recidivism, and other maladaptive behaviours relevant to the criminal justice system (e.g. substance use). Impulse control can be conceptualized as encompassing the broad domains of response inhibition and impulsive/risky decision‐making. Advancements in technology have led to the development of computerized behavioural measures to assess performance in these domains, such as go/no‐go and delay discounting tasks. Despite a relatively large literature examining these tasks in offenders, findings are not universally consistent. This systematic review aims to synthesize the literature using computerized neurocognitive tasks to assess two domains of impulse control in offenders: response inhibition and impulsive/risky decision‐making. The review included 28 studies from diverse geographic locations, settings, and offender populations. The results largely support the general conclusion that offenders exhibit deficits in impulse control compared with non‐offenders, with studies of response inhibition more consistently reporting differences than studies using impulsive and risky decision‐making tasks. Findings are discussed in the context of contemporary neuroimaging research emphasizing dysfunction in prefrontal cortex as a key contributor to impulse control deficits in offenders.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Technological advances in the assessment of impulse control in offenders: A systematic review

Vedelago

Amlung

Morris

et al. 2019

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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show abstract

“…They concluded "that low future time preference is a driver of criminal behavior" (p. 31). The same was concluded by Akerlund et al (2016) after studying data for a Stockholm birth cohort at age 13. They aggregated that the link was much stronger for males with low intelligence.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 54%

Deterrence Theory in Paraguay: Exploring Fraud and Violation of Trust Cases

Schneider¹

2019

Social Sciences

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This research paper contributes to the literature of deterrence theory in general, and in particular, with respect to white-collar crime, offering valuable insight by using a unique dataset of fraud and violation of trust incidents within the jurisdiction of Paraguay. Descriptive evidence shows a clear and continuous misallocation of funds and human capital, therefore providing less efficient services for the public. Regression analysis suggests that clearance rate exerts a highly significant effect in deterring fraud, but the results are not clear for violation of trust incidents. Despite the limitations of available data, results confirm the deterrence theory in Paraguay. However, for more than two-thirds of victims, not even an attempt was made to seek justice. As a side-result, it seems that a soft-on-crime strategy, induced from the former German penal code, has led to an increasing share of pre-trial diversion, therefore enhancing white-collar crimes like fraud and violation of trust, due to impunity.

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“…Since research has found that intertemporal 4 preferences are predictive of a wide variety of important life outcomes, ranging from SAT scores, graduating 5 from college, and income to anti-social behaviors, e.g. gambling or drug abuse [1,13,24,28,45], they are 6 frequently studied in both humans and animals across multiple disciplines, including marketing, economics, 7 psychology, and neuroscience.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Time preferences are reliable across time-horizons and verbal vs. experiential tasks

Lukinova

Wang

Lehrer

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Individual differences in delay-discounting correlate with important real world outcomes, e.g. education, income, drug use, & criminality. As such, delay-discounting has been extensively studied by economists, psychologists and neuroscientists to reveal its behavioral and biological mechanisms in both human and non-human animal models. However, two major methodological differences hinder comparing results across species. Human studies present long time-horizon options verbally, whereas animal studies employ experiential cues and short delays. To bridge these divides, we developed a novel language-free experiential task inspired by animal decision-making studies. We find that subjects' time-preferences are reliable across both verbal/experiential differences and also second/day differences. When we examined whether discount factors shifted or scaled across the tasks, we found a surprisingly strong effect of temporal context. Taken together, this indicates that subjects have a stable, but context-dependent, time-preference that can be reliably assessed using different methods; thereby, providing a foundation to bridge studies of time-preferences across species. Introduction 1Intertemporal choices involve a trade-off between a larger outcome received later and a smaller outcome 2 received sooner. Many individual decisions have this temporal structure, such as whether to purchase a 3 cheaper refrigerator, but forgo the ongoing energy savings. Since research has found that intertemporal 4 preferences are predictive of a wide variety of important life outcomes, ranging from SAT scores, graduating 5 from college, and income to anti-social behaviors, e.g. gambling or drug abuse [1,13,24,28,45], they are 6 frequently studied in both humans and animals across multiple disciplines, including marketing, economics, 7 psychology, and neuroscience. 8A potential obstacle to understanding the biological basis of intertemporal decision-making is that human 9 studies differ from non-human animal studies in two important ways: long versus short time-horizons and 10 choices that are made based on verbal versus non-verbal (i.e. "experiential") stimuli. In animal studies, the 11 subjects experience the delay between their choice and the reward (sometimes cued with a ramping sound or a 12 diminishing visual stimulus) before they can proceed to the next trial [8,11,73]. Generally, there is nothing for 13 the subject to do during this waiting period. In human studies, subjects usually make a series of choices 14 (either via computer or a survey) between smaller sooner offers and larger offers delayed by months or 15 years [2, 49]. (We are aware of only a handful of studies that have used delays of minutes [48] or 16 seconds [25, 31, 40, 60, 72]). During the delay (e.g. if the payout is in 6 months) the human subjects go about 17 1/25 their lives, likely forgetting about the delayed payment, just as individuals do not actively think about their 18 retirement savings account each moment until their retirement. 19Animal studies of delay-disc...

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Time discounting and criminal behavior

Cited by 68 publications

References 35 publications

Technological advances in the assessment of impulse control in offenders: A systematic review

Technological advances in the assessment of impulse control in offenders: A systematic review

Deterrence Theory in Paraguay: Exploring Fraud and Violation of Trust Cases

Time preferences are reliable across time-horizons and verbal vs. experiential tasks

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