Crime as a Rational Choice (for one last time)
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Professor Daniel Kahneman is the 2002 Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, who made important contributions on our understanding of human judgement and decision making process. In his best-selling book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, Kahneman describes two different systems in our mind: The first (System 1) involves the use of fast and automatic thinking, and the second (System 2) involves the use of slow and logical thinking.We all use both systems in our daily lives, although their uses are quite different. System 1 is mostly used in frequent daily activities with little conscious effort. Examples include driving on an empty road and understanding simple sentences. (Do we put any conscious efforts when doing these tasks?) System 2 is used in less frequent tasks that require deliberate thinking, such as filling out tax forms and deciding which college to attend and which major to choose. System 2 thinking corresponds to a rational, economic decision-making we have seen from economics textbooks and classes. System 1 thinking does not.Many crimes, especially violent ones, may be the results of System 1 thinking. For example, some physical altercations between youths start off for trivial reasons. A youth may “automatically” react to a simple eye contact from a stranger by uttering an offensive word or giving a stare. If the stranger responds in a similar way, a physical altercation can easily follow. However, if they used System 2 thinking and thought about the potential costs of an altercation, their responses may have been very different. This raises an important question. If people are committing many crimes because of their quick, automatic System 1 thinking, wouldn’t encouraging them to think slow and rationally (System 2) lead them to commit fewer crimes?Researchers from the University of Chicago tested this hypothesis by running the following randomized control trial. They recruited 2,740 male students in 7th-10th grades from highly disadvantaged parts of Chicago and randomly assigned them into two groups. One group was then invited to participate in a program called “Becoming a Man” (BAM), which helped participants avoid making unhelpful automatic responses through group activities and regular meetings with adult program leaders. A typical group activity made participants think about how they can get what they want without instantly resorting to physical force and alleviate their hostile attribution bias. In other words, BAM participants were encouraged and trained to use System 2 thinking more often. Subsequent laboratory experiments on the BAM participants and non-participants show that students were indeed more likely to think slow and rationally after participating in the BAM program. Not surprisingly, they found that program participants were much less likely to be involved in violent crimes than non-participants (by 44 percent).Up to this point, it may have seemed that the usefulness of a rational choice model of crime in understanding and predicting people’ criminal behavior would be fairly limited. If many crimes are committed by irrational individuals who do not think about the costs and gains from crime, what good is a rational choice model in explaining and predicting their behavior?However, this may prove to be an important opportunity. If people commit crimes irrationally out of sudden rage and frustration, helping them to think slow and rationally, and realize the full consequences of their crimes may be a cost-effective crime-fighting strategy. The cost of the BAM program turned out to be $1,100 per participant, which looks miniscule compared to the costs of hiring more police officers, long prison sentences, providing better and longer schooling, and more generous government welfare programs.References:
- Heller, Sara, Harold A. Pollack, Roseanna Ander, and Jens Ludwig. Preventing Youth Violence and Dropout: A Randomized Field Experiment. No. w19014. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2013.
- Heller, Sara B., Anuj K. Shah, Jonathan Guryan, Jens Ludwig, Sendhil Mullainathan, and Harold A. Pollack. Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago. No. w21178. National Bureau of Economic Research, 2015.
- Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. London: MacMillan. 2011.
- Levitt, Steven D., and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh. “An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang’s Finances.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 115.3 (2000): 755-789.
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