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ABSTRACT AND ARTICLE INFORMATION
Rational choice theory has received a fair amount of attention from criminal justice scholars and societal policy makers looking for an alternative to traditional deterministic theories of criminal behavior and is a core feature of several major criminological theories. In an effort to provide a more comprehensive perspective on criminal decision-making, the current paper highlights the role of emotion in the choice process and reviews factors that increase the likelihood of antisocial outcomes. The result is a theory of decision-making in which the individual is believed to act on the hedonistic and moral emotions that guide moral decision-making and where irrelevant emotions are enhanced and relevant emotions dampened by cognitive and situational factors that, in the end, serve as the foundation for criminal choice.
Article History:
Received 7 Feb 2015
Received in revised form 2 April 2015
Accepted 6 April 2015
Keywords:
rational choice theory; moral emotions; hedonistic emotions; proactive criminal thinking; reactive criminal thinking_
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Grounded in the early philosophical writings of Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and what would eventually become known as the classical school of criminology, rational choice theory has become a major force in modernday criminology. It is a core feature of several major criminological theories-deterrence theory (Paternoster, 2010), routine activity theory (Cohen & Felson, 1979), social learning theory (Akers, 1998), general strain theory (Agnew, 1992), social interactionism (Tedeschi & Felson, 1994), and Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime, to name just a few-and one popular approach to crime control-situational crime prevention (Clarke, 2009). In contrast to deterministic theories of criminality and criminal justice, rational choice theory maintains that criminals and non-criminals differ only in the choices they make. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of emotions in decision-making and provide an alternative view of criminal decision-making that incorporates both the rational and nonrational elements of the criminal choice process.
Rational Choice Theory
Rational choice theory (RCT) is based on a number of principles, seven of which are listed below (Gul, 2009):
1.Rationality: The human being is a rational actor.
2. Utility: The actor makes means/ends calculations as...